


The Animal of Your Body

by Mothfinder_General



Category: Watchmen (Comic), Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, you're telling me a body kept this score
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:15:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 55,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27966668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mothfinder_General/pseuds/Mothfinder_General
Summary: Rorschach's early origin story, retold with the glowing detail left in - eat your heart out Malcolm Long.
Relationships: Dan Dreiberg/Rorschach
Comments: 131
Kudos: 72





	1. 1956

The Charlton Home for Problem Children doesn’t have space to keep its charges beyond tenth grade. There aren’t enough dorm rooms; there are too many problems per child. High school and college are for kids whose parents aren’t whores, or drug dealers, or dead in a bad neighbourhood at the tail end of America’s golden age.

Sixteen-year-old Walter Kovacs leaves the Home in an oversized suit. Every boy gets a suit on his way out – one of the benefactors pays for it. He doesn’t know what the girls get and he doesn’t know any well enough to ask. He crosses the river from New Jersey to New York, because that’s what all the kids want to do, to chase their dreams to the Big Apple. Not that Walter remembers his dreams much, these days, or if he does, he’s certainly stopped telling people about them.

He has no friends and he says no goodbyes. He rents a cheap single room in an apartment block in Hell’s Kitchen, going off an address given to him by a diffident guidance counsellor. The landlord, an old man with a thick Cork accent, already knee deep in the sludge of dementia, rents it to him at a discount because Walter reminds him of his son, killed in a gang war in the 1932. It’s the red hair. “Gaelic fire,” the old man tells him.

Walter doesn’t say anything. He hasn’t thought of his body, face or features as discernable, remarkable objects for a long time. He feels like a nervous system free-floating through the putrid summer heat. Every so often an appetite demands attention, like a whining dog, and he has to fight the urge not to respond to its demands with violence.

He gets a job in a warehouse in the garment district. He learns just how little the charitable benefactor has to pay for those suits.


	2. 1958

Walter Kovacs is eighteen years old. He’s worked in the warehouse for two years and he can’t imagine working anywhere else. He can’t imagine anything much. Imagination is dangerous. If he spends too long sunk in his own head, dark waters rise up around him, filled with driftwood and corpses. He avoids introspection and daydreaming, rarely casts his mind beyond the end of the week. He focuses on the sewing machine. He fixes his mind on fabric, stitches, buttonholes. His manager thinks he’s diligent. He gets a small raise. He’s good at what he does, but they call it ‘unskilled labour’ and he takes care to remember that.

He doesn’t need the raise, really. His salary covers the cost of his rent, his meagre meals, the occasional treat from a takeaway stand selling caramel nuts or popcorn. The warehouse isn’t a pleasant place but it’s not awful and they let him fix up the stuff on the reject pile, so Walter is respectably clothed. He never grew into the oversized suit. He’s a small boy. A small man.

On his days off he boxes at a local gym, because he remembers enjoying boxing at the Home – one of the few memories he allows himself to check in on. In the late summer of 1958, he’s persuaded by the head of the boxing club to compete for a place in the unofficial league. He can’t think of how to say no, so he says nothing, and that’s taken as a yes.

They put him in the lightweight class, on account of his height, his reach, his weight. Walter competes. He wins every fight. He wonders vaguely why he doesn’t seem to feel pain the way everyone else feels pain. He bleeds, bruises and swells, like the men he lands punches on, but they always react like the body is precious cargo, broken treasure. They curl around the agony, protecting it. Walter’s body is an animal that won’t leave no matter how hard he kicks. Why should it bother him if it gets beaten up? Why should he flinch away, take a break from the onslaught?

Walter is declared lightweight champion. Walter is not asked to compete again. He overhears someone in the changing room call him a ‘fucking little psycho’ and deliberates taking offence, before he decides he didn’t hear anything.

In October, the local fleapit cinema announces a season of film noir. Walter doesn’t understand that this is a triumph for the cinema, a favour from distributors and copyright holders. He doesn’t go to the movies and he doesn’t speak French. He doesn’t speak much at all. But he’s got money saved from the unexpected raise and people seem uncomfortable to see him at the boxing gym these days, so on one of his days off he pays for a matinee ticket.

The film is 1941’s _The Maltese Falcon_. Humphrey Bogart plays private detective Sam Spade, in a fedora and a trench coat, plaqued with cynicism. He’s funny. He’s cocky. He can solve the mysteries no one else can. He radiates effortless masculinity. He radiates bitter, unstoppable darkness.

In the back of Walter’s skull, a trapdoor creaks open. The water starts pouring in. Walter lets it.

He comes back every evening, paying the higher ticket price. _The Big Sleep. The Third Man. Murder My Sweet. The Maltese Falcon_ , four times in total. (He walks out of _The Postman Always Ring Twice_ , upset in a shaking, nauseous way that robs him of the night’s sleep.)

Walter wonders where he can buy a fedora.

On his next shift, on the 20-minute lunch break, he mumbles something about private detectives – where do they come from? He speaks so rarely that the other workers taking a break – ten in total, six of them women – turn and stare at him. Walter hates being stared at. He ducks his head, blushes until his skin and hair look like adjacent shades on a wallpaperer’s chart.

The only person who answers is Moshe Hamburg, a greying man at least twice Walter’s age and about his height, who wears what Walter has only recently learned is a yarmulke (many of the men in this warehouse do). Moshe isn’t much of a talker either. He’s been here a long time and he’s as much a part of the furniture as the Singers. “Probably they’re recruited somewhere,” he says, hoarse, unsure. “You gotta be smart to private detect, boy. Maybe they recruit from the winners of the cryptic crossword.”

This gets a laugh from the assorted group. Moshe and another man in a yarmulke say something to each other in a language Walter doesn’t speak, with the cadence of an old joke, but he’s already not listening. He knows what a cryptic crossword is. They appear in the back pages of the paper. Tonight he will buy the evening paper and learn about cryptic crosswords.

That night, he buys a paper and takes it up to the bath. The ‘amenity,’ as the landlord calls it, is shared by five renters on the second and third floors; it is a glacial room with an iron tub fed by rickety, capricious pipes. Walter’s cheap rent runs to hot water once a week, so he bathes once a week. This suits him fine. Walter doesn’t enjoy being alone with his naked body. It makes him feel like he’s alone with the victim of a horrible crime.

The cryptic crossword provides him with distraction and frustration. He doesn’t understand what any of it means. He feels like he’s straining for sense in the sound of the wind rushing through the trees. But he notes that the back pages includes answers to the previous day’s crossword. He towels off, dresses. He will keep this edition and tomorrow he will buy the evening paper and work backwards through the clues.

Deep winter is coming. In the Irish Catholic neighbourhood where he lives, carollers start appearing on the streets. Walter barely pays them any attention. The cryptic crossword is full of unfamiliar words. _Sarcophagus. Psychiatry. Baroque. Newtonian._ There’s a secondhand bookshop five blocks from the warehouse; he buys an old dictionary. The dictionary offers more puzzles, more unfamiliarity. He finds himself walking thirty blocks to the nearest public library.

Walter has a new hobby. He allows himself to remember – gingerly dipping his toes in the shallows of memory – how much he’d enjoyed the ethics and citizenship classes at the Home. He learns about ancient Norse gods, Freudian psychotherapy, the mechanics of lockpicking, the Industrial Revolution, the ancient Olympics, the Louisana Purchase. He finds himself recognising allusions in cryptic crossword puzzles; then, he finds himself recognising allusions in books to other books; then, he finds himself seeing a live and churning stream of allusion, suggestion and obfuscation in the news he reads at the front of the paper. He is shocked to discover that the whole world is muttering to itself, all of the time, betraying it secrets in an incontinent, ever-present ramble. He wonders if he’s spent two years deafened by the sound of sewing machines. How else could he justify not noticing how much the city is screaming to itself?

At night he lies curled up like a cat, nose pressed to his knees, and thinks about Sam Spade. He shuts out the thought of Brigid O’Shaugnessy; she’s just a dark shadow moving around the screen. He thinks about solving crimes, landing punches. He thinks, again, about how much better he’d look in a fedora.

The black water has filled half of his skull. Sooner or later the barricades are going to burst.


	3. 1960

Walter Kovacs is twenty years old. His biceps strain against the sleeves of his shirt but his trouser legs still need taking up. He is filled with a restless energy that makes his skin feel thin and his dreams feel crowded. He doesn’t understand what he wants. The animal that is his body wakes him up at night, keening with unfulfilled hungers. He eats cheap peanut butter directly from the jar. He rejoins the boxing gym, to the considerable trepidation of the other men there, and pounds with his fists until his whole spine sings with the effort. He picks up extra shifts, uses the money to by waffles and French toast at the Gunga Diner, pushing the food into a mouth gone slack with exhaustion from overwork. Nothing changes. The animal whimpers, night after night. 

At the warehouse, where he has been for four years – four years! – he is promoted from the general sewing pool to more specialist sections – hand-sewn reinforcements, customisations, made-to-measure work. It feels like being promoted from a puddle to a bigger puddle. But it’s all he’s ever known. Why does he feel dissatisfied? 

He meets Luis, a second-gen Puerto Rican who works mainly with leather. Luis is initially extremely distrusting – he has lost a brother to the gang wars. “You a mick?”

“No.”

“You look like a mick. Red hair. You live in a mick neighbourhood?” 

Hell’s Kitchen is, in fact, mostly working-class Irish.

“Yes.”

“So if it looks like a mick, quacks like a mick and swims like a mick, what is it?”

Walter shrugs with one shoulder. He knows the ropes of his muscles move against the fabric when he does. “Classic mistaken identity caper?” he suggests. 

Luis likes that. He grins. He has a nice face, the sort of face that makes Walter feel strangely satisfied, like looking at a finished jigsaw puzzle. Luis lets it go, but not before remarking, “Man, you’ve got a Jersey accent you could float a rock on.”

Walter has never thought of himself as having an accent before. Two days later he checks out a book about elocution from the public library. He studies it very carefully. 

At some point that year, a young Italian woman places an order for a dress in a new fabric, based on Dr. Manhattan’s technological innovations. Walter knows about Dr. Manhattan because he’s not deafblind or stupid. The man is a big cyan weapon. He has to do with the power, with the government. Walter has nothing to do with power or the government. He trusts the men in charge to do their job to protect Americans from the Communists; in the meantime, he will do his job and clothe them.

Walter, who works mainly with men’s clothes, doesn’t have to deal with the dress until it comes back rejected. Rejected customisations, which come through the storefront, have to be sorted and categorised, in case they are salvageable. Most of Walter’s own clothes come through this system, so he’s on the rota to pick up the slack.

When he sees the dress, he feels a strange rush. It’s not quite what he felt two years ago, looking up at the big black-and-white face of Humphrey Bogart, but it’s something like what he felt when he first recognised that the crossword setter code-named Tisiphone used musical metaphors to indicate homonyms. It’s a feeling like a nod across a crowded room. Fate bestowing a pat on the head. Well Done, Good Dog. 

The latex-like material repulses him when he imagines how it might have clung to the curves of a woman’s body, but he loves the pattern. He loves the way the black swims and bunches, colluding calligraphically, never merging with the white. He thinks of the crackle of cinema projectors, their monochrome visions. He thinks of the pleasure of delineation, of taxonomy, of exacting definitions that do not blur across boundaries. 

Another worker on the reject rails – a youngish woman with a shock of cold sores around her heart-shaped mouth, who goes by Alta – asks him what the fuck he thinks he’s doing with the dress. “You planning on wearing that, you god damn fairy?” she asks him, with a nervous laugh. 

Walter understands the insinuations. He knows what the words mean. He understands the words queer, fairy, fag as much as he understands the words slut, whore, bitch. He knows he hates one category and, based on the vehemence of the words, he should hate the other. But he doesn’t know any queers, whereas the streets are full of whores. Maybe queers live in different neighbourhoods. He tries to imagine being as disgusted by a faggoty man as he would by a sluttish woman, but the image is empty; he may as well imagine fog. He’s never been touched by another man except in violence. Seduction is for women. Sam Spade knew that.

He takes the dress home and learns how to rework the fabric. He’s good at learning. There’s so much space in his head. The water that rushed in two years ago has eroded the granitework fortresses; there are hollows and caves where his mind wanders freely. Information pours in, is stored on the newly discovered shelves. He imagines – he imagines – he imagines – he doesn’t know what he imagines. In dreams, Sam Spade tells him, When I slap you, you’ll take it and like it, and he wakes up with the feeling that all of his veins have caught fire.

Luis takes him to a different boxing gym. They go to the cinema. He supposes they’re friends, in the four or so hours a month they spend together outside of work, sometimes with other people in Luis’s circle, sometimes not. He puts the cut-up fabric away and starts learning about General Tacitus. 


	4. 1962

Walter Kovacs is twenty-two years old when he learns about the murder of Kitty Genovese. In one stricken moment, tinnitus ringing in his ears, he wonders – was that the same name as the Italian woman who placed the order on that old latex dress? – and then, in the next, there is never any doubt that it was the same woman. It doesn’t matter how true this part of the legend is. Walter’s certainty scabs over it, closes the skin until it knits together.

There are 38 witnesses to Genovese’s brutal killing. That’s more people than Walter knows by name. 38 people who heard her screaming and begging, who saw her struggling. They didn’t even call the police.

For the first time in six years, Walter asks to leave early, within an hour of his arrival at work, pleading violent, disruptive illness. His morbidly pale face suggests something grotesquely intestinal, which his line manager does not want to deal with, so he’s allowed to leave. He’s warned he won’t be paid for any of the hours he misses, but he barely hears the warning.

It is full daylight when he gets home and he crawls into bed, chin on his knees, shoes still on his feet. It feels like there is a sack of eels where his heart should be. He feels like he might vomit, though not with his stomach. The nausea comes from somewhere else. He doesn’t understand what his body is showing him. Pain lances through his brain.

He thinks about a little redhaired boy, in a thin cotton sweater against the February cold, sitting in a hallway while the bedsprings shriek in the bedroom. He thinks about the sea of conversation that swirled around that boy’s head, submerging him utterly. _Oh, everyone knows what his mother is. We all know what she does. Isn’t it shocking! It’s common knowledge what he comes from._

It was common knowledge, and no one stepped in to help. Not even a little child. Not even a dying woman. No one lifted a finger. No one could be pushed to give a good god damn about anyone but themselves.

_Well sir, there are other means of persuasion beside killing and threatening to kill_ , says Kasper to Sam Spade. And Sam Spade replies, _There’s none of them any good unless the threat of death is behind them._

Walter rolls until his head is dangling off the single bed. There’s a cheap cardboard suitcase stuffed with the detritus of four years living in the same room. The latex fabric is on there.

Walter pulls out the suitcase.


	5. 1964

The route to Rorschach felt like this: Walter Kovacs had spent six years climbing the stairs of a very, very high building. Day after day, identical steps fell away under his feet, scrolling out behind him. He didn’t look up or look around. He only knew he had to get to the top of the building.

In 1962, he reached the roof, and looked around, and saw the world. It was an evil, dirty, cruel place. And so, he stepped off roof.

The route to the bottom was much, much quicker.

After years of lethargy, of intellectual hibernation, Walter came to life like a haunted marionette. The mask was the first step. Two years ago, on the evening after he’d put the mask together, he slid out into the darkness of Hell’s Kitchen and beat the shit out of three muggers tearing into another man. It had felt good, like scratching an itch until it bled. But he’d done it in a shirt and slacks. That had felt crude, somehow.

He knew, the way he knew the sun rose in the east and a rumble of thunder preceded a storm, that Rorschach would dress like Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe. These were the examples of masculinity he most admired: strong, smart, world-weary, acidic. Effortless. The centre of a powerful field of magnetism. He didn’t choose the violet; it’s just that customers rarely sent back good suit material in black or grey. He’d had to make do. And to be honest, as soon as he got into the suit, he felt like he’d strapped on armour. He made a couple of copies, worked on the cut and the lining, added hidden pockets.

The summer gabardine trench coat was easy, but the leather winter one was much more complicated. In the end, he had to call in a favour from Luis, who taught him how to work the leather. It was one of their last interactions. Because as Rorschach, he was suddenly on a moving walkway, running to keep ahead. He needed more money to cover the costs of being Rorschach. He got a job in another part of the garment district, a higher-paying role that was closer to the job of a tailor than a sweatshop machinist. (It occurred to him that no one else at the warehouse had tried to better themselves in this way. He thought ungenerous thoughts towards them. He did not consider the colour of his skin, the inflection of his worked-over accent, his gender, his youth, how these things might have slanted in his favour. He forgot the six years he’d spent treading water in place.)

After years of living like a termite in a mound, he felt an overwhelming need for privacy. He moved out of the cheap SRO and into a sixth floor walk-up with a bathtub in the kitchen. He ordered a pair of shoes with elevator pads and steel-capped toes (Humphrey Bogart, he’d read, was 5’8”, so Rorschach needed two extra inches). He kicked a couple of heads in, liked what he saw, ordered a second pair.

In 1963, a man named Hollis Mason published an autobiography, _Under the Hood,_ revealing himself as the recently retired masked adventurer Nite Owl. It engendered a spate of masked adventurism across America. Walter watched the circus unfold through Rorschach’s mask. Most new adventurers only lasted a month or so. They didn’t realise criminals were allowed to hit back. They thought that the underworld was just the city with the lights down low; they weren’t prepared for what they saw. They arrived, they took one beating, they burned the costumes. Only Rorschach stayed.

By 1964, Walter was consumed by what he thought of as _his work_ – the day job was just a means of obtaining the money to keep a roof over his head, food in his stomach. He went from stamping on the faces of muggers and rapists to disrupting the plans of small-time drug lords and petty skin kings. But he wanted more. He was like an addict chasing a high, but instead of seeking bigger and bigger doses, he wanted to crush bigger and bigger evils. Every so often – in the weak dawn light, washing gravel out of gashes, sewing up stab wounds in his kitchen bathtub, tying the sutures with the thread held between his teeth – he remembered his mortality. He was the terror of the underworld, but he was only one man.

He needed a partner. There was one other masked adventurer in operation in New York City, a showboater named Ozymandias who had been on and off the scene since 1958. He couldn’t really see Rorschach beside this golden trophy human. He couldn’t put his finger on why, but he didn’t like Ozymandias. There was something so… _glib_ about him. Untouched by the darkness that drove Rorschach like an engine.

If not him, then who?

The animal of his body slept fitfully, aching with something that had nothing to do with the aftermath of violence. He did not for a moment suppose that he might be lonely.


	6. 1965

In the spring of 1965, Rorschach watches a man in a cape and form-fitting body armour knock out five gang members like skittles. Behind the mask, his eyes hold up grudging 8s. He gives this guy three to six months. He’s a tidy fighter but even from here, two storeys away, perched raptor-like on a fire escape, Rorschach can practically smell the talcum powder and packed lunches. This kid is a Boy Scout in Hades.

Three of the gang scum flee the scene and Rorschach downgrades his score to 6, but the caped man does manage to tie two of them to a fire hydrant. Rorschach will catch up with the other three – they won’t get far, pounded meat that they are, but he always resents having to tidy up after the amateurs that crop up on his streets like fungal growth.

The caped man catches his breath and rolls his shoulders. He takes something from his laden belt – a tiny console of some kind? Perhaps it’s a walkie-talkie and he’s contacting the police? Rorschach puts one foot on the railing and prepares to climb to the roofs to make his getaway. He hates criminals, but he’s not fond of the NYPD either.

The caped man dials something, looks up expectantly. Rorschach feels a tug of nerves, but he’s sure that he’s invisible.

The street explodes with light.

There’s a bloody great creature floating above the roofs, a few feet from Rorschach’s head. It looks like it should be making a cacophony, like a helicopter, but apart from a bone-shaking hum, the beast is silent. In the microseconds it takes for Rorschach’s heart rate to climb down, he realises the eyes are windows, that the monster is a craft. It has a big wistful avian face and, by the looks of it, enough fire power to take out the East Side.

Below him, the caped man is clambering up the fire escape to make the leap into the killer dirigible. He passes Rorschach, stops abruptly.

“Oh,” he says. “Hello.”

Rorschach leaps to the pavement. The skyship has bleached the whole street white but he wouldn’t be Rorschach if he couldn’t find a shadow. The caped man’s night vision has been shot by the lights and he can’t see where Rorschach goes. “OK, well, nice to meet you too!” he shouts. “Thanks for the audience! Real helpful!”

He climbs into the monster’s stomach. A few seconds later, the lights go off and the skyship lifts silently into the night sky, vanishing.

Rorschach watches them go.

His mind is churning. The waters in his skull, now oceanic in their volume, are thundering in a brewing tempest. He wants to run and run and run. He wants to break some bones. He wants a go on that skyship. It takes him almost five minutes, standing there, shocked in a new and interesting way, before he remembers he has to clean up this guy’s mess.

The paper the next morning tells Walter that he has witnessed the debut of Nite Owl II. _Criminals don’t have a prayer against this bird of prey!_ the standfirsts crow, listing the names of the five (yes, five) mid-ranking gang members successfully detained by Hollis Mason’s protégé. Walter could be annoyed by that – by his sums, Rorschach did just over half the work detaining those hoodlums – but his mind is full of night flights. He talks to Sam Spade in his head, for want of having anyone to actually talk to. Struck by techno-lust, he buys himself a secondhand radio, tells himself it’s for keeping tabs on breaking news. He plays music on it sometimes, pacing back and forth across his tiny apartment, his whole frame humming with an indescribable new energy.

Over the next month, Rorschach keeps tabs on the owl man. Nite Owl II doesn’t come out every night, and is noticeably more present during weekends (but then, so is vice). He’s a good fighter; he’s more defensive in a brawl than Rorschach, but then again he’s in body armour and a helmet, and can take a hit like a kiss. He starts, as they all do, on patrol, picking up the dregs of the criminal element, but by the sound of his interrogations, he has loftier ambitions. _Who’s your boss_? Rorschach hears him ask. _Where do you pick up the junk? What are your instructions?_ And he has _so many gadgets_. Walter didn’t have toys growing up – reasons too sad to linger on – and he lives a life of monkish asceticism, but now when he throws punches he thinks about throwing smoke grenades.

_The man can fly!_

He buys a police scanner off the black market, because he’s certain there’s one of those in the skyship and he finds himself keen to be hearing what Nite Owl is hearing, experiencing what Nite Owl experiences. He’s a little annoyed at how useful it is, especially as it confirms for him that the police aren’t always doing their job, and not every emergency is attended to with the utmost urgency.

Five weeks after Nite Owl II’s debut, Rorschach tails him to a warehouse on the Hudson, where Nite Owl disrupts a handover of a shipment of heroin hidden in crates of nuts. Rorschach, rarely, doesn’t stay to watch how this pans out. Instead, based on what he’s seen of Nite Owl over the last few weeks, he works backwards to where he thinks the skyship is parked – not in the air, on this clear night, but in another warehouse. He’s bang on. He climbs in through its belly.

The inside of the skyship is amazing. It looks like it might be around the same size of his apartment, and it’s considerably better decorated. In front of the windows – the eyes – panels of buttons wink soft yellow and green lights. There’s a door that leads to a back room of some sort, which Rorschach doesn’t open – he’s more than capable of breaking the lock, but he wants to make a good first impression. There’s a panel in one of the walls that opens easily to reveal – Walter smiles beneath the mask – a coffee machine. He dials for a black coffee with six sugars. He takes the cup. He settles down on the floor, out of sight of the ramp, and waits. In about ten minutes, he hears sirens, and readies himself for the pilot’s return.

Nite Owl comes up through the hatch panting and noisy, unbending through the aftermath of a good old-fashioned dust-up. Sloppy, thinks Rorschach. In a space as quiet as this warehouse a really good sharpshooter would be able to pick him out from his breath alone. Rorschach sits for a few moments in their shared silence, savouring the noise of the owl man’s breathing. It’s sweeter than the coffee still lingering on his tongue. Another mask. Another soldier on the side of right. A living, breathing, real boy.

“Nice ride,” he says, and Nite Owl whips round.

“You!”

Rorschach gets up, and Nite Owl shifts into a fighting stance. Rorschach shakes his head. “Should know enough to know I’m not your enemy.”

He likes the effect this is having on Nite Owl, who looks flustered and wary, visibly calculating his next move. “They call you the Terror of the Underworld,” Nite Owl says, finally, letting his fists drop to his side. Rorschach tips his fedora in a mocking salute. “You haven’t been doing much terrorising of late. Seem pretty content letting me pick up the slack.”

Rorschach shrugs. “Had to check you weren’t another hobbyist.”

“Did I pass?”

Rorschach regards him for a few seconds, and in it, Nite Owl stands up straighter, rolls his shoulders. “You’ll do,” he says, and Nite Owl snorts.

“Why are you here – Rorschach, is it? Yes. Apart from helping yourself to Archie’s coffee.”

Rorshach files ‘Archie’ away for later – he doesn’t want to be distracted, and if he gets this right, there will be plenty of time for questions. “Here to propose a partnership.”

Nite Owl’s mouth twitches. “I don’t need a partner,” he says, but with a flatness that suggests barricades going up, not weapons being drawn. Rorschach knows all about breaking down barricades.

“Needed Hollis Mason as an example. Needed the owlship as firepower. Now need a partner as reinforcement. This bust goes bigger than one shipment. You’re going to want a pair of eyes that aren’t windows watching out for you.”

This is the most Walter or Rorschach have said in one go for several years, and by the end of it Rorschach is having to really focus on not letting the New Jersey slip through. He keeps his sentences clipped to avoid faltering. He doesn’t want to give anything away.

Nite Owl is watching him, face still carefully blank.

Finally he asks, “How can you see through that mask?”

The same question has occurred to Rorschach before. The material seemed opaque when he worked on it, but as soon as it went over his head, it was filmy, only deepening the shadows and drawing out the lights. He wondered whether the developers working under Dr. Manhattan’s technologies had known this would happen. It seems unlikely. In his most fantastical moments, he wonders if it was fate.

“Familiar with saying: Justice is blind?”

“Yes…?”

“Terrible lie. Justice has X-ray vision.”

Nite Owl bursts out laughing. The sound fills Rorschach’s head like rain. “Oh my God. Well, alright, uh, Rorschach? Let’s… have a trial run and see how it goes.”

Rorschach straightens up. He tries not to touch the walls; he’s so sure his body is filled with electricity right now that he could short-circuit something. He wants to press every button on the console.

“How high does ship go?”

Nite Owl grins at him. “How high do you want it?” he asks, and flicks a switch. The ship starts to rise into the black and blue night.

Rorschach thinks no matter how high it climbs, it couldn’t possibly catch up with how high his heart is soaring.


	7. The Partnership

To begin with, when they go out on patrol together, Rorschach has to check flashes of irritation every other minute. He’s not used to another body being so close to his all the time. He forces himself not to experience it as a threat. He wonders how Sam Spade dealt with Miles Archer for years, wonders if _The Maltese Falcon_ only works as a film because Miles is killed and Sam’s on his own for most of the runtime. _You made a tactically sound decision_ , he chides himself. In what Nite Owl sarcastically refers to as a ‘probation period’ of their partnership, he admits to himself that the flights in the skyship make up for the sheer awkwardness of having to interact with another person without punching them.

He realises that, for the past three years, he has moved through space like an arrow loosed from a bow, and now he has to adjust his trajectory; not only that, but instead of working on raw instinct, so immediate it is languageless, nerve-led, he now has to accommodate space for another person’s _thoughts_. Nite Owl has ideas about patrol routes, tactics, their joint ambitions as vigilantes. Rorschach has never discussed anything he does with anyone, not even himself. Suddenly, all of his choices are accountable to The Partnership, an invisible forcefield that sits over the two of them like a bell jar.

The Partnership – Rorschach hasn’t reckoned with The Partnership. The Partnership isn’t just a stone-cold tech-laden fighting machine. It is two people, having people thoughts, doing people things. Rorschach doesn’t do people things. Walter barely does people things. But Nite Owl has as many people things to do as he has buttons on Archie’s controls.

Take Archie. “Why?” Rorschach asks one evening, as they drift like silent death over the rooftops.

Nite Owl laughs self-deprecatingly. He does that a lot. He makes a lot of noises Rorschach considers unnecessary – self-deprecating laughs, theatrical groans of despair, tsking at fastenings and locked doors, sighing deeply when disappointed. (Rorschach is always silent, unless he needs to speak. He has never had anyone to whom he needs to signal emotion, and so he has never picked up this habit.)

“It’s short for Archimedes. He’s Merlin’s owl in _The Sword in the Stone._ ”

Rorschach says nothing – he is filing away this information – so Nite Owl continues into the silence. “Have you read _The Sword in the Stone_? It was one of my favourite books as a kid. I read the _The Goshawk_ when I was a bit older – where he tries to train a hawk using traditional means instead of more modern ones. T.H. White, I mean, the guy who wrote _The Sword in the Stone_. He takes the poor hawk to the pub! And he keeps stroking its feathers so it loses all its waterproofing. I felt sorry for that hawk. Wild birds aren’t pets, you shouldn’t treat them like they are. But I still loved all his books.”

This comes out in a steady stream – not panicked or flustered, but certainly not without an artificial buoyancy. Rorschach is internally reeling from the amount of information he’s just received. Now he has to think about Nite Owl as a winsome little boy; he has to think about the training of hawks; he has to think about Nite Owl’s opinions on animals and on reading. These are _people things_. Rorschach is evidently supposed to respond with similar people things. He casts around, comes up with:

“Bad habit of authors and artists, to impose patterns of human nature on animals for sake of narrative. Hawk doesn’t want friends, wants only freedom, and if not offered freedom then at least the boundaries set from human in which it may be an echo of hawk. In many ways, think of good governance as work of good austringer: both take dangerous wild animal – in one case man, in another raptor – and, through means of stringent training, bring basest and most dangerous instincts under control of trainer.”

Nite Owl is looking at him with his mouth slightly open. “Wow, well I… yes, I suppose so. Austringer, eh?”

“Flies hawks and eagles,” Rorschach grunts. It was the answer in a cryptic crossword sixteen months beforehand and, like so much of what Rorschach learns, had been neatly filed away in the caverns of his head.

  
“Oh, _I_ know that. I’m a bird nerd. I just didn’t expect that you would.”

They pause on the edge of a building, survey the street below. Drunken shouts and wild laughter, but as yet, no edge of viciousness. Rorschach knows it will come eventually. That’s why he’s always ready.

“Where did you say you went to college again?” Nite Owl asks innocently.

Beneath the mask, Walter flushes furiously. “Didn’t say.”

Nite Owl laughs softly. “God damn it,” he murmurs.

As time goes on, Rorschach finds himself absolutely mired in Nite Owl’s people things.

Nite Owl likes Chinese takeaway food and has opinions about the best such establishments in a particular fifteen-mile radius that Rorschach surmises is the radius around his house. (Sloppy, thinks Rorschach.)

Nite Owl really likes Billie Holiday and thinks that the music from this new, popular British band The Beatles is just a rip-off of the blues music that the southern states have been doing for decades. (Walter retunes his radio. Out of curiosity, he tells himself.)

Nite Owl thinks technological advancement is a moral imperative, that technology will usher in an era of prosperity and peace if only they could somehow uninvent the A-bomb. (“Think it was a bad idea to drop it on the Japs?” growls Rorschach. “Oh, I mean, not a _bad_ idea, it ended the war, but, you know, I’ve seen pictures of Hirosh-” “Good,” says Rorschach, and that ends _that_ conversation.)

Nite Owl’s workout routine is punishing, but apparently it’s the only way to keep the weight off, especially given the aforementioned Chinese takeaways. He lists the weights, the reps. (“What do you do? You’re just pure muscle. Like a fist in a suit.” Rorschach is baffled. Who eats enough to get fat? Who needs to lift up and squat under heavy objects to tire them out before patrol, before hand-to-hand combat and scaling multiple storeys of buildings? The man is clearly soft in the head.)

Nite Owl is at _college_. This is the one revelation that stops Rorschach in his tracks. “I’m graduating next year,” Nite Owl says shyly. “Majoring in engineering. Aeronautics. Minor in –”

“Ornithology,” Rorschach interrupts, and Nite Owl chuckles.

“Yeah. Guess I’m as obvious as a zit on a pin-up’s face.” Rorschach shudders. But the revelation stays with him. No wonder Nite Owl mainly patrols at weekends. Rorschach does some calculations, realises that Nite Owl is half a decade younger than him. The thought that this big, dangerous brawler, this finger on the trigger of Archie’s cannons, is just a college kid – it bothers him. It makes him feel strange in a way he can’t put his finger on.

Some of it has the flavour of envy, of course. At twenty, Walter Kovacs had already been employed at the garment warehouse for four years. The academy, its libraries and its lectures, its founts of knowledge, its voyages of intellectual discovery – none of that was for him. Walter had to piece his own education together through the back pages of newspapers and the ten-book on-loan limit. But Nite Owl’s youth also imparts a disturbing sense of fragility. Rorschach thinks of the blossoms tricked by late winter sunlight, killed on the branch by spring frosts. He thinks about the fact that Nite Owl can judo throw a 200-pound pimp over his shoulder but can’t legally buy a beer.

Things get worse when The Partnership moves to the next level. Nite Owl and Rorschach know they work well together on a small scale, at the level of the street. Now they want to take it a step up, and take down a major gangster. One does not simply walk into Gangster HQ and beat up the bodyguards to do this. It takes planning. They need to sit down and _plan_.

Patrols begin when Rorschach meets Nite Owl at a pre-determined street corner (once or twice slightly too close to Walter’s walk-up for comfort). One fresh April evening, seasoned with a burst of rain, Rorschach goes to meet Nite Owl. Archie is parked nearby. They get in. Nite Owl suggests they take Archie towards Midtown. Rorschach shrugs, helps himself to coffee. Beneath them, the throbbing, flickering, live map of New York unrolls.

Rorschach never switches off. He notices that the buildings are starting to resemble those in the fifteen-mile zone where he has deduced Nite Owl lives. He knows this before he even knows he knows it; the knowledge arrives fully formed. When they start to descend, heading for a warehouse lot that is suspiciously dark and abandoned, he doesn’t say anything, but he has stark monochrome premonitions for where they’re going. His heart is racing the way it did when he first started out on patrol three years ago, when he wasn’t sure he was going to come out of every fight he got into. He always faces away from Nite Owl when he drinks Archie’s coffee – he has to roll the mask up to free his mouth – and he’s glad Nite Owl can’t how much he’s grinding his teeth.

Archie is moving at a steady clip along a dark passage – far longer and deeper than a warehouse ought to be. Nite Owl is humming ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me’. The tune frays Rorschach’s nerves.

Archie nudges into a huge basement room. Rorschach takes in a workshop table, a display of eight television screens, the detritus of electrical and mechanical smallwork. He takes in an open display cupboard where variations on the Nite Owl suit stand ghostly and empty.

Nite Owl clears his throat. “Welcome… to the Owl’s Nest.”

Rorschach rolls down his mask and turns slowly to face him. He’s certain the black spots are boiling like thunderclouds.

“Stupid move, Nite Owl,” he mutters.

Nite Owl throws his arms in the air. “Oh come on, man! We’ve known each other for months! We can’t have a war room in, in, I don’t know, the Gunga Diner. I had to make a decision!”

Rorschach doesn’t know what to say. He makes to say something disapproving, sort of clears his throat, can’t quite get it out. He makes a noise like ‘hurm’. Underneath the mask, Walter is blushing.

“Can get waffles at Gunga Diner,” he murmurs, finally. Nite Owl laughs loudly, practically steaming with relief.

“Well, I can make French toast. It’s pretty much all I can make. Take it or leave it.”

“Will accept this trade,” Rorschach says, though now his mind is racing again. He has never eaten in front of Nite Owl. Drinking coffee and water, he is always able to turn away for sips. He doesn’t know how to negotiate this new and terrible terrain, and he’s already feeling like the ground is shifting underneath him when Nite Owl reaches up and removes his mask and googles, quickly, all in one go, like he’d had to steel himself to rip off a plaster.

Rorschach freezes. That ‘hurm’ noise again, then, “Very stupid move, Nite Owl.”

The man in front of him smiles bashfully. “It’s Daniel. Um. Dan.”

“Any smart moves, _Daniel_ , or is it stupid all the way down this evening?” Rorschach growls.

“Just sheer dumbassery all night. Sorry, buddy.”

Rorschach’s heart is thumping strangely. He can feel it all the way up to his throat and all along his ribcage. Nite Owl – Daniel – has the sort of soft hazel hair that suggests childhood blond. His eyes are framed in long lashes that, without the googles, squint a little myopically. He has bright, clear schoolboy skin and a lower lip that is just a trifle too full. The words ‘classical beauty’ come to Rorschach’s mind and settle on his thoughts like lead. He cannot shift them or think his way around them. Classical beauty. With a body like Adonis. He makes that stupid noise again, ‘hurm’.

“Will not be reciprocating.” Is that disappointment? “Movie star looks might distract you. Have had to fight off admirers with big hammer before, hence mask.”

Nite Owl – Daniel, Rorschach thinks with a grimace – snorts. “Yeah, I didn’t think you would. You’re a suspicious son of a bitch. Don’t preen, it wasn’t a compliment. Will you take off the coat, at least?”

Rorshach puts the coffee cup down with exaggerated care and begins to unbutton his trench coat. He hears Nite Owl – Daniel – sigh with relief, but his pulse is singing. He feels indecent, and feels that feeling indecent makes the situation far more indecent. _People things_ , he thinks, bitterly.

They climb down from Archie and into the huge basement.

Rorschach looks around alertly. There are stairs that lead upwards to a door, which in turn must lead towards an apartment or house. “College roommates?”

“No, I live alone.” Nite Owl – Daniel – says, and he doesn’t even try to hide the harmonics of his voice, the lilt and tip of loneliness. It feels more indecent than undressing in front of him, hearing that on his voice.

Rorschach can feel shelves in his head creaking with new information. His name is Daniel. He lives by himself. He likes Billie Holiday and birds. He can make French toast and not much else. He has named his ship after a fictional talking owl. He is one half of The Partnership. He is twenty years old. He is lonely. He is very beautiful.

In the back of his head, half drowned out by the thunder of discovery, Walter thinks, _oh no._


	8. The Good Doctor

Over the course of the next week, Rorschach makes discoveries on three levels, which he categorises into Contextual, Strategic, and Uncomfortable.

The Contextual discoveries pertain to the chundering mess of ambient information from the street, like sewage crashing through a water mill. In no particular order, from leaning on stool pigeons and being vaguely threatening in underworld bars, Rorschach learns the following: high-grade opiate-based imported drugs have entered the New York black market, only temporarily disrupted by Nite Owl’s bust several months beforehand; Nite Owl and Rorschach are thought of as a team, and are referred to as ‘Bird and Blot’ by underworld heavies, Rorschach’s prior existence as a lone operator all but forgotten; Ozymandias is investigating a spate of what can only be called revenge castrations in downtown Manhattan; a new titty club called the Sugarbowl has opened on West 42nd, with Big Figure’s M.O. all over it; the existence of Archie is not yet widely known and people think Nite Owl can literally fly.

The discoveries are a pyramid, and from the raw mess of Contextual Rorschach pulls Strategic together with Nite Owl in the war room of the Nest. The obvious way to take down Big Figure is to conclusively link him to the drugs shipments of this terrifyingly pure new drug. The recent opening of the Sugarbowl, which is so much gaudier, more public and more cocksure than Big Figure’s usual back-room strip joints, suggests an ego trip, a power flex – Big Figure considers himself to be skating the edges of legitimacy, raised sufficiently high above the drugs trade that makes his money that it would be difficult to draw a straight line between the two convincing enough to stand up in court. Nite Owl and Rorschach should pay the Sugarbowl a visit and see what they can shake down. The revenge castrations are a red herring; some streetwalker has evidently had enough of being forced to give the goods away for free to violent men and has started extracting a pound of flesh as payment. ‘Bird and Blot’ can disregard and let Ozymandias deal with that sordid affair.

At the top of the pyramid sits the Uncomfortable. These are discoveries from the war room that Rorschach makes privately. When he tells Daniel their new street nickname, the tips of Daniel’s ears – visible without the Nite Owl hood – go rose-pink with delight. His lips fill with a deeper rose as the blush travels down across his face. Walter extrapolates a full-body palette. The image is printed, risograph vivid, across the forefront of his mind before he can stop it. Daniel’s nipples would be the same bruised petal pink as his slightly-too-full lower lip. Walter stares into his mask, tries to will the world black-and-white.

“Blot, eh?” says Daniel, grinning and pushing his glasses up his nose. (The glasses – Rorschach has learned about Daniel’s short-sightedness too. The man is just a bag of minor deficiencies wrapped up in Kevlar and fire power, or so he tells himself, severely, to stop thinking about the rose garden of Daniel’s body –)

“I should have tried ‘Blot’ when we were on the Bs,” Daniel continues. He has got up now, and is picking up Nite Owl’s cape and hood. Time to visit the Sugarbowl. “Ready, Edgar?”

Daniel has a ‘fun’ new ‘game’ he has ‘invented’, in which he tries to guess Rorschach’s real first name by working through the alphabet. He is currently on E.

“Born ready. Would have died on delivery if born ‘Edgar’.”

“Oh, sorry, Ewan.”

Rorschach hasn’t decided what he’s going to do if they get to the end of the alphabet and Daniel guesses correctly. He’s hoping Daniel will lose interest around ‘M’ so he doesn’t have to pick a course of action. Walter knows there’s a fragment of him, lodged like a bone in the throat, that wants to be discovered, wants to be _known_. He fights it down, chokes it back.

They take Archie to Times Square, park him behind the camouflage of the strobing signs, and proceed to the Sugarbowl on foot, on the heads of the buildings. It has been some time since Rorschach has felt irritated by Nite Owl’s presence, and now they fall into step easily.

The Sugarbowl is the sort of lurid fleshpot that makes Rorschach gag (when they first step through the door, Walter does actually dry heave a bit behind his mask – the music, the scarf over his throat, the grave symmetry of the mask’s patterns, make it unnoticeable). Waitresses in barely-there minidress uniforms serve groups of smoke-wreathed men in booths lined with magenta leather; on the stage, three sluts in approximations of 18th century court dresses strip and gyrate to big band music, their bodies pornographically caged and revealed by the bones of the corset harnesses. Rorschach sees a plaster pink nipple and is flooded with an awful ankles-up shame. To think he was thinking about those parts of _Daniel’s_ body –

When they enter the room, conversation dies down and rises again very quickly, an octave higher. Rorschach is compulsively imagining spinning round and round with an open jerry can, dousing everything in petrol, dropping a match, watching gelatinous breasts blister and blacken. He promises himself five minutes, sets off a timer in his head, rummages for reassurance in the cavernous shelves of his skull. _Just keep it together_ , Sam Spade’s voice tells Walter, who has dry-heaved again, a bit more obviously this time. He feels Nite Owl gently bump against him, taking an awkward side step to get out of the way of a waitress, and puts a several feet between them instantly.

This brings him close to the nearest booth, which contains a couple of semi-recognisable men’s faces, some of which Rorschach is fairly sure he’s smashed in or tried to push through backs of heads before. One of the men has turned almost as white as the white on Rorschach’s mask. Rorschach growls, “Going to tell me you’re here to spread the word of the Lord?”

There are three of them, and they are all looking at one another to be the first to admit to being Spartacus. Rorschach’s position on the sex trade is extremely well known; it’s hard to forget his opinion if you remember it every time you piss blood for a month after he shares it with you. Finally, one of them tries, “They have… a… good selection of… wines?”

“Alcohol clouds the mind, gentleman. Though not as much as concussion.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Rorschach can see the booths around them emptying. Behind him, Nite Owl’s voice, all pleasantries and sunrise tones, is putting the fear up a group of gangsters.

“Aw, come on man,” one of the scum whines. “We just wanted to watch the floor show. No funny business. It’s a legit establishment.”

Rorschach grunts. “Funny business. Like flooding streets with high grade opiates? Hear that’s a laugh.”

The whiner evidently has a death wish. “Listen, brother, we don’t ask the junkies to get into debt. One taste of the good stuff and they binge.”

Rorschach feels it then, like a whip cracked in his arteries. He imagines Sam Spade quirking an eyebrow. Something is off here, and it’s not about the drugs.

“Famously rich, junkies,” he says, words coming out on automatic while his brain spins. “Is why ‘junk’ is synonymous with ‘expensive’ and ‘luxury’.”

“Well, they find the money, don’t they, we don’t know nothing about that,” the whiner gabbles, and Rorschach can see his companions are giving him the evil eye.

“Hmm,” Rorschach says rather than hmms. The whiner, visibly sweating, picks up his tumbler to take a sip. Rorschach waits until it’s at his mouth and then, with one swift crunch, smashes it into the man’s mouth. The glass cracks against his teeth and shatters. He emits a horrible animal shriek.

“Not your brother,” Rorschach says evenly. “Where’s the money coming from,” he rifles through his tome-thick mental Filofax, pulls up a card, “Rodney?”

Rodney, however, can’t speak. He’s pawing at his mouth, his eyes wide with panic. A sloppy, meaty noise in the back of his throat suggests he might have panic-swallowed some of the glass.

“Jesus, Rorschach,” one of the other men says, his voice weak with fear. “We just collect the cash, OK? The doctors sign the paperwork off.”

“Paperwork?” murmurs Rorschach.

“The insurance paperwork.” The man’s brow crinkles. “Wait. Is this not about –”

He falls silence. Rorschach prompts, “About?”

“Aw, shitballs,” the man mutters. He holds up his hands. “Some junkies are paying their debts with money they’re collecting off injury payouts. We pick it up. That’s all. We don’t know nothing else. Above our paygrade.”

“Doctors might, though?” says Rorschach. “Suppose all that medical school has to teach something. Most helpful, gentleman. Good evening.” Rodney’s blood pools on the table.

Rorschach turns and has to take in the vista of the Sugarbowl again, but the dabble with a little light violence has cleared his head. He regards the human refuse around the room with cold dispassion until his eyes alight on Nite Owl, who is firmly patting the shoulder of a beaky little man who has turned the colour of an old toenail clipping out of terror. Nite Owl catch his eye and strides over.

“Alright, Ezekiel?” he murmurs when they’re closer. “Do you know, they first thing they always ask me is, ‘Are you going to call Rorschach over?’.”

“Response?”

“I say it depends on how interesting their conversation is. You’d be amazed how fast they start talking. That was one of Big Figure’s house solicitors. They get a discount here, apparently. He’s been signing off a lot of –”

“Injury payouts,” Rorschach interrupts. Nite Owl grins. “Cockroaches on table six mentioned doctors. Sounds like fraud.”

Nite Owl sighs, and begins to say, “Fraud just isn’t as _fun_ as a straightforward beating,” when a small voice beside them squeaks, “Excuse me?”

They turn. There is a waitress beside them, holding a tray with two tall glasses of champagne. They are rattling; the waitress is shaking. “Mr Figure says these are on the house.”

“Tell him thank you but we would rather gargle battery acid,” Nite Owl says pleasantly.

The waitress lowers her voice. She is a blonde with hazel eyes and creamy skin. Rorschach is repulsed by the gossamer of her décolletage; he tries to see if Daniel has noticed it, is angry at himself for wanting to check. “Please keep looking at me and talking like I’m tryna give you drinks,” she hisses. “You need to talk to Dr Chea. This is _all wrong_.”

“Where can we find Dr Chea?” Nite Owl asks, delicately picking up a glass by the stem and pouring the contents onto the floor.

“Surgery just above the Village. All the girls get their stuff there.” Rorschach’s notices ‘stuff’, feels another tug of disgust. Feminine issues. Sticky and cloying.

Nite Owl calmly empties the other glass onto the floor. “You’ve been very helpful, Miss…?”

“Julia. Just Julia. Now please get _out_.”

Nite Owl bows ironically, and turns to go. It takes Rorschach a few seconds to process that Nite Owl has taken his elbow and is gently steering him out. He shakes him off as subtly as the anger will allow.

“You went very quiet there,” Nite Owl says.

“You were _handling_ her just _fine_ ," Walter snaps through Rorschach’s mask.

They return to Archie in nervy silence. Nite Owl takes them up, and asks, in a careful, measured voice, if Rorschach could use the navigation system to look up Dr. Chea’s address. Rorschach finds a surgery address for a Dr. Sovanni Chea. He also notes a private address, which is listed as ‘removed from public records’. Once again, he is forced to admire what they can get done with technology at their fingertips. He memorises the private address.

They fly in silence. Rorschach sits in the left-hand lid of Archie’s eye and stares out over the city.

Finally, Nite Owl clears his throat and says, “You don’t much like, uh, those kind of places, do you?”

“No,” Rorschach mutters.

“Mm,” Nite Owl says. He begins to bring Archie down. “Thank you for coming in with me.”

Rorschach feels as if Nite Owl has lifted a backpack of rocks off his shoulders. “Had to be done,” he says. “Got what we needed.” He swallows. “Good team.”

“Yeah, we are, aren’t we,” Nite Owl says quietly, and the backpack of rocks settles again, but oddly this time, its weight almost comforting. Walter knows he’s going to be parsing the tone of that response for weeks.

They park on the roof of the building of Dr Chea’s surgery. Nite Owl leans back. “Hey, Fabian?”

“Assume this is me. Yes, _Daniel_?”

“Do you think it was stupid to fly out here to try and talk to a doctor in his surgery at 12.30 in the morning?”

Rorschach gives this some consideration. “New York is city that never sleeps. Insomnia a debilitating medical condition. Maybe doctor is in.”

“We’re going to break in and ransack his office, aren’t we.”

“Yes.”

“Amazing.” Nite Owl presses the button to release the ramp. On the roof is the door that leads into the building; Rorschach’s picks the lock as easily as he would scratch his nose. They begin their descent.

“Out of interest,” says Nite Owl, as they march in perfect step down the stairs, “when _do_ you sleep? Because I am only barely managing to keep up with my papers this year. I fall asleep in lectures.”

In truth, Walter is more and more exhausted with each passing day. He has never patrolled nightly – none of the masks do, because creating a routine creates a pattern for criminals to work around and disrupt – but a significant number of his evenings are given over to mask work. On his days off from his day job, he sleeps for twelve, thirteen hours, misses most of the daylight. He comes in from patrols in the early hours of the morning and is asleep before his head hits the pillow. Sometimes he takes power naps in the storage rooms at the warehouse.

“Justice never sleeps,” he tells Nite Owl.

“No? Does it take cat naps?”

“Name isn’t Felix, either, if that’s where this is leading,” Rorschach replies, and Nite Owl laughs.

They find the nameplate ‘Dr S. Chea’ on a door on the third floor. It is nondescript – Dr Chea is evidently not senior management. The door is locked, which presents Rorschach with exactly twelve seconds of distraction. Inside, it looks the way Rorschach assume all doctor’s offices look: desk, filing cabinets, certificates, dying pot plant at one end, a curtain, a bed, metal sinks, disturbing cupboards at the other. He’d never been to the doctor in his life. He assumes this is a standard set-up.

“Check filing cabinets,” he says softly to Nite Owl. “May be some information about fraudulent insurance claims.”

“But Julia told us to come and talk to him,” Nite Owl whispers. “Which sounds like he might want to help us? Maybe there’s something else we’re supposed to find.”

Walter is about to snap irritably, oh, well, if _Julia_ says so, then _obviously_ that’s more important than working on the _actual_ intelligence they’ve gathered, when he hears a small noise behind them, like a sharp intake of breath. He whips round.

There’s a woman standing in the doorway – small, brown-skinned, white lab coat – and this is all he has time to take in before she launches herself at the pair of them, drawing a sword, an actual sword, that has come from God knows where under the coat. She goes for Nite Owl, bringing the sword underarm to his throat, which Nite Owl just about deflects with his forearm. The sword bounces up, slices his cheek. The woman pulls back and slashes forward in one vicious little pulse and this time Nite Owl’s uniform loses a chunk, which Rorschach registers with alarm, that is one _sharp_ sword –

He realises that Nite Owl is, for some reason, not fighting the woman properly, isn’t trying to land a hit or break her grip on the sword, but just dodging her onslaught with increasing ineffectualness. Rorschach steps behind her, follows her arm through a thrust, then grabs her at the shoulder and forearm and pushes her into an off-balance follow-through. She stumbles for just a second, but a second is enough for Rorschach. He seizes a fistful of hair at the back of her head and slams her face, hard, onto the surgery table. There is a grisly crunch. The woman drops the sword.

“Jesus, Rorschach!” Nite Owl shouts. Rorschach ignores him and kicks the sword to the other end of the room.

The woman straightens up. She is short – a head shorter than Rorschach, even. There is blood dripping over her mouth and off her chin. Her expression is oddly mild, as if Bird and Blot have just come in to offer her an unwanted biscuit. She tests her nose with her fingers.

“Yoob boken by gnose,” she says, disapprovingly, and goes to the sink.

“Dr Chea?” Nite Owl asks, uncertainly.

“gYes,” Dr Chea replies. She is opening the cupboards above the sink, producing bandages.

“Julia sent us. That is – we thought – we’ve been investigating the insurance fraud Big Figure is running…”

Dr Chea is taping up her nose fastidiously. “I gdon work for Gig Fibure,” she says. “His girls com ghere sombtime. Girl broblems. I take broblems away. Or stob them habbening.”

“You’re an abortionist,” Rorschach says. Dr Chea tilts her head at him.

“Bain mangger,” she says diffidently.

Nite Owl’s lips move as he tries to work that out. “ _Pain manager_?”

Dr Chea leans against the sink to face them. The blood is drying on her face. Between the bandage and the gore, she looks like a crime scene (thinks Rorschach with some satisfaction). “Somb tituation cause bmore bain than others. Remoob tituation, remoob bain.”

Remove situation, remove pain. “Oh, a _philosopher_ ,” Rorschach growls. The doctor tilts her head again.

“A Buddhis,” she says. Then, “Is bis about metadon beplacement?”

Rorschach and Nite Owl look at one another. Nite Owl’s lips move again and Rorschach says, “Methadone replacement.”

“I wish you hadn’t broken her nose, bud. This could take all night.”

“gI also wish gthis,” the doctor volunteers.

“Tell us about methadone replacement,” says Rorschach. “As clearly as possible.”

“I gdon use it anymore. They tol me it was more effectib than metadon. Bub it made girls… weird.”

“How so?” asked Nite Owl.

“More bain,” the doctor says. “ _New_ bain. gThey wen back to jung.”

Rorschach can feel it again, the flicker of the new, the edge of a seam of diamond in the coal. Something is _happening_. Junkies writing off debts with insurance payouts from faked accidents at the same time as whore’s doctors are handed an opiate replacement therapy that produces pain…

“Have enough here,” he says to Nite Owl. “Need to talk to some victims of _accidents_.”

“Yeah,” says Nite Owl. “This is finally getting interesting.” He turns to the doctor. “Ma’am – that is – Dr Chea – do you have any samples of the medicine?”

The doctor wanders across to another cupboard. She is quite close to Rorschach and he drops a little, shifting his centre of gravity so no sudden attack can leave him off balance. She produces a small bottle, which she holds aloft.

“gHere.”

“Give it to me,” Rorschach says. She looks at him with the same mild expression she has worn for the entire interaction, then extends the hand that holds the bottle. Rorschach reaches down to take the bottle and she grabs his wrist.

She’s fast, but Rorschach is faster. Rorschach is always faster. This is why, when the blade of a small dagger sinks in to his side, he has already deflected it in such a way that it glances off a rib and harmlessly slides upwards. There is a lot of blood, but it’s an almost laughably insignificant stab wound. He snatches the dagger, pulls the bottle from her grasp, and with a quick twist breaks two of her fingers. He hears a cry, and thinks it’s from the doctor, but it’s from Nite Owl.

“Rorschach!”

“Fine, I’m fine,” he mutters, holding the heel of a hand against the wound. He feels Nite Owl’s pulling at his shoulders, turning his body.

The doctor is holding her hand up, inspecting the broken fingers. Nite Owl is whispering his name, urgently. He feels a larger hand cover his own.

The doctor looks at them. “My bnife,” she says, and there is an edge of uneasiness.

Rorschach straightens up. Nite Owl is trying to push him out of the room – there is a hand on his waist, and its weight is curiously freeing, curiously makes him feel impervious to everything.

“Know what happens when people come at me when I’m unarmed, with a weapon?” he asks her, softly. The doctor shakes her head.

“Means I have a weapon now,” says Rorschach.

He finally sees it – a grimace, a little seed of fear. “I gdon like men,” the doctor says. “gDon com here again.”

They shut the door on her, holding her broken hand in the other.

“Oh my God,” Nite Owl says, his voice cracking. Rorschach can feel him shaking. “Oh my God… Rorschach, can you walk?”

“Am fine,” Rorschach says gruffly. There is pain, but like all the physical pain Walter has even felt, it is both present and distant, like pain reported by telegram, pain described in a book. “Not a deep wound. Amateur.”

“I thought that she – I don’t know why she _did_ that…”

“Annoyed I’d disarmed her. Obviously touchy. Let’s get to Archie.”

“Yes, I’ll get us home… Rorschach, I thought…”

“Don’t,” says Rorschach, because there is so much vulnerability showing in Nite Owl’s voice he feels like he’s watching him do something private, like bathe or sleep. It occurs to him, distantly again, a far-off sentinel holding up a sign, that this is the first time either of them have witnessed the other receiving a stab wound. As first-time stab wounds go, they have got off remarkably lightly. “Better to think about why an abortionist carries a sword and dagger.”

They make their way up the stairs, dripping blood. “Well, I don’t know,” says Nite Owl. “I’ve never had an abortion, maybe those are the standard instruments.”

It’s barely even a joke, it’s too sick, too stupid, but Rorschach gives a grey bark of laughter, and then Nite Owl laughs too, a little too hard, a little too hysterical. They laugh weird ill laughter all the way to Archie.

The flight home is done on autopilot, as Nite Owl refuses to leave Rorschach’s side, even though the bleeding has slowed considerably. He brings a towel out from the room at the back to press against the cut, and Rorschach spots what looks like carry-all, as if Nite Owl is packing to go somewhere; he makes a mental note to ask about it when this dagger-to-the-ribs situation has settled down a bit. The dagger and the bottle of medicine has been dropped on the floor, both smeared red.

When they get back to the Nest, Nite Owl all but carries him to the makeshift medical section at the far end. He drops on to the cot as Nite Owl rips off his hood and goggles, runs back to scrabble frantically on the desk for his glasses.

“Nite Owl,” he says, then, “ _Daniel_. Am fine. Not dying. Take it easy.”

Daniel scrubs his face with the heel of his hand. “I didn’t want to hit her,” he croaks, finally. “I couldn’t bring myself to – she was so _small_. I’ve never hit a – if I’d just, she wouldn’t have –”

“Was clearly deranged. No telling what she would or would not have done,” says Rorschach, though privately he agrees, and somewhere deep in some sticky violet place in his heart he feels oddly jealous that Daniel couldn’t bring himself to hit the doctor. He begins to remove his trench coat and jacket, and Daniel stumbles back over to the cot to help.

“Fine like this,” he mutters, trying to bat Daniel away, but he persists.

“You shouldn’t move too much, buddy. Let me help. Fuck. Think she might have ruined this suit.”

“Will send her my dry cleaning bill,” Rorschach says, and again, it’s not funny, but Daniel laughs loud and long, a man relieved to hear another man still talking.

Walter feels as if he’s floating on a lagoon and there are things circling in the water beneath him, but the sky is clear and blue and the surface is so calm, he can’t bring himself to panic or fight. He lets Daniel use a pair of scissors to clip through his shirt, peeling the soaked material aside to reveal the stab wound. Daniel touches it, makes a noise of soft concern, sorts out curved needle and thread. Walter's skin is suddenly hypersensitive; it feels touched, imprinted, long after Daniel lifts inquisitive fingers and turns to the medical kit. It's almost intrusively tender, as if Daniel has just slid a finger into his mouth, except the wound hums with pain. _When I slap you, you’ll take it and you’ll like it_ , says Sam Spade in a loop on his head.

“Can do this myself,” he says, but Daniel ignores him.

“Do you know what’s real fucking eerie, man?” he says instead, one hand steady on Walter’s ribs.

“That extinct diseases are trapped in Arctic ice, in corpses of mammoths and other megafauna, and increased nuclear testing may lead to melting of ice caps, release of ancient sickness?” Daniel blinks up at him. “Sorry. What?”

“That fight. You didn’t make a sound when she stabbed you. And she didn’t make a sound when you broke her fingers or her nose.”

“Told you. She was clearly deranged.”

Daniel ties off the thread. In the meticulous stitching of his partner’s flesh, his attention to the detail at hand, he has become calm again. He sits back on his haunches and looks up at Rorschach’s still-masked face. The scarf, stained with blood, dangles jauntily over his shoulder. “Are you deranged?”

“Man who dresses as vigilante owl asking man who dresses as vigilante gumshoe if one is deranged?”

Daniel laughs. “Fair enough.” He stands up, and looks down. His expression empties silently. Walter is suddenly acutely aware of what he is not wearing – no trench coat, no jacket, his shirt cut open, the noughts-and-crosses playground of his scarred chest partially exposed.

Daniel says, very quietly, “You’re a redhead.”

Too late, Walter remembers what he so often forgets: that his body is specific, distinguishable. That it belongs to him and betrays him. He instinctively reaches up to cover the copper-red curls on his chest.

Daniel’s mouth has parted slightly, and his mouth has taken on the same bruised petal colour as it had before they’d gone out that evening. Then he turns away, taking the colour with him.


	9. Interlude

Walter Kovacs is twenty-five years old. He has never taken any drug stronger than aspirin. He has never learned to swim. He has never taken a holiday, never left the states of New Jersey and New York. He has never seen a play, never owned a TV or a record player. He _has_ drunk alcohol, on two occasions, but he didn’t like it either time. He has never eaten an avocado, a pineapple, or a mango. He has never kissed anyone. He’s not sure he can even remember being embraced.

Entire years are sunk in the black oceans in his head, reappearing in the dreams he forces himself to forget. He has to make himself anew every time he puts on the mask, drawing on the scant reserves of Walter Kovacs that he considers safe, sturdy. He went in to The Partnership welded together from the best of his parts, intended to fortify his green young construction with firepower. But he is starting to learn that even the best of himself that he can offer is made of faulty, compromised material. He patches and patches; he solders shut the cracks. He can’t work fast enough. Chunks are falling off his casing.

He is afraid of Walter Kovacs.

In the aftermath of the amateur stab wound, as Nite Owl and Rorschach eat salt beef bagels and plan their next moves, Rorschach learns that the carry-all in the back of Archie is packed for ‘a few days away’. _To where?_ Rorschach asks Daniel, his head turned away as he eats. _Well, here,_ says Daniel. _This is where I’m going. I fly over from Harvard for, you know, all this._

The world tips on its axis. Rorschach realises he assumed Daniel was studying at Columbia. Daniel’s presence has suddenly expanded an entire state. He is shocked – that’s the only word for it, shocked – at how much space this young man takes up. He has a whole basement full of tech in New York, with what Rorschach assumes is at least an apartment, possibly even an entire house, above them. Now he’s also a resident of Cambridge, Masschusetts. Perhaps he has roommates there. Perhaps he has a girlfriend, a rich and sophisticated co-ed with a zoology degree, glossy hair, kitten heels, a trust fund. Perhaps he isn’t as lonely as Rorschach imagined – fantasized. He is the centre of a web of glimmering, gorgeous connections; Rorschach is a single loop on the web, going nowhere, touching nothing else.

He thinks – as Daniel starts to tell him about the logistics of hiding Archie in Cambridge – about the movie memorabilia shop in Chelsea, which, for a few weeks in 1963, had an original poster for _Casablanca_ displayed in the window; about how Rorschach used to divert his night patrols to pass by the display, looking into Humphrey Bogart’s serious face, wondering what he’d say to Bogart if they ever found themselves falling into step on some dark street. He thought about the day the poster was bought and the display vanished, and how Rorschach had accepted this, because the world was full of things Walter Kovacs couldn’t have – that was just the way of the world. _People things_ are for people, and neither Rorschach nor Walter are people so much as they are ideas.

He thinks about how much Daniel must spend on a house he isn’t even in for most of the week.

He thinks about how he has never been to Cambridge, or Massachusetts, which is what he says out loud, to stop Daniel talking, to indicate a lack of interest in following Daniel’s life outside of The Partnership, and feels something twist in his stomach when Daniel says, clearly joking, clearly not meaning it, “Oh, you should come up with me some day. We can go out on patrol and bash some frats.”

When he lies in bed that night – Rorschach’s ruined uniform discreetly stowed in the underbed trunk, to see what he can salvage tomorrow – he remembers Daniel’s voice, his blank-and-rose expression when he said _You’re a redhead_. He feels a complicated physical shame that comes on like a rush of wind, that starts in the chest and spreads outwards. His body feels bad – not unwell, but uncanny. He hates, he hates, he _hates_ having to cart it around. He wants to take it by its throat, throw it from the Chrysler.

Memories are seeping under the barricades, oozing and stinking. It always happens, when he thinks too long about his body. _Look at this fucking mess_ , his mother is shouting in a room filled with empty food tins, piles of dirty laundry. _I can’t bear it. Everything here is filthy_. _You’re filthy. You’re a filthy fucking mongrel_. The sound of a slap echoes across the dank remembered room.

_I think she’s ruined this suit_ , says Daniel, his fingers under Rorschach’s clothes. Mess, mess, mess. He touches Walter’s body. He sews it shut, stems its leakage, but the mess is already made. _You’re a filthy fucking mongrel._

His body keens. There’s tightness across his chest, between his legs. He doesn’t want to make a mess. He circles the stab wound with an index finger, presses a little, and the body transfers its attention to the hot buzz of sensation. He receives the pain then puts it to one side. He presses harder and the pain increases, so he receives it again and puts it to one side again. Pain is easy to deal with. The other sensation, not so much, and it’s so humiliating to have to clean it up afterwards.

_You’re a redhead._

More memories. Alta with her bubbling mouth, the word ‘fairy’ leaping off her tongue like a spark. A man holding up a dress, staring as if hypnotised. Latex over his mouth, over his eyes. Weakness, wetness, womanliness. He thinks the word ‘faggot’ and the body bucks, confused, aroused.

Walter grinds his teeth. This wouldn’t have happened if that whore doctor hadn’t stabbed him, he thinks with brief clarity. That knife was sharp, that sword was sharp. Well-made. _Professional_. He has memorised the private address for Sovanni Chea. If his body makes it through the night, he’ll dress it up as Rorschach tomorrow and use it to break some bones.


	10. Mangoes

On Tuesday night, Rorschach sets out over the rooftops to an address on the edge of Harlem.

Nite Owl isn’t on patrol. Rorschach now knows Nite Owl isn’t even in the city. He tells himself that’s all he needs to know, but his brain is crawling with Harvard dioramas. Something like resentment nudges him. If Daniel hadn’t decided to treat Rorschach as a confessional, he wouldn’t have to deal with any of this.

The warming weather softens the air, and the wind brushes like satin. Rorschach is peculiarly disturbed by it, as he is by any sign that the outside world wishes to touch him gently. He will soon have to change from the leather trench to the gabardine, which is, for him, a time of mourning: there are fewer truly dark hours in a New York summer, fewer hours in which Rorschach can safely operate. He is a man of long evenings and the threat of rain.

He takes a gap between buildings as easily as he might step off the kerb and only the hair-trigger nature of his reflexes stops him from running face-first into Ozymandias.

“Oh,” the golden boy says, stepping gracefully to one side. “Rorschach. How nice to see you.”

“Good evening, Ozymandias,” Rorschach says in his most colourless tone.

If Rorschach is the threat of rain, Ozymandias is a crisp and sudden snowfall. Rorschach respects Ozymandias, though he’s not certain if he likes him. They are the only two masks in the city who have lasted longer than a few months, and in fact Ozymandias is some years Rorschach’s senior as a vigilante (Rorschach suspects they are approximately the same age). He is effective and intelligent, though Rorschach considers him a little pat in his media presence, a little too benign on scum. Their beats almost never cross over, as much by design as by accident, and they have never collaborated. But they know one another, the way cats know the other cats who bisect their territories, and Rorschach has seen him fight often enough to feel uneasy about the outcome should the two of them ever spar. He doesn’t look like he was born the way most humans are born; he looks like he hatched out of a phoenix’s egg. His skin has its own light.

“Such charming news to hear you’ve taken young Daniel Dreiberg under your wing,” Ozymandias says, his voice just on the right side of the friendly/patronising divide. “I understand he’s a bit of an upgrade on Hollis Mason, thematically.”

Rorschach is often grateful for the obfuscation of his mask, and never more so than when he speaks to Ozymandias. _Dreiberg_. Of course Ozymandias knows his name. Ozymandias is a walking cocktail party address book. Rorschach has forced himself not to find out who Daniel is, insistent that he feels irritated and impinged upon to even know Daniel’s face and the whereabouts of his tech-cave basement; now he knows he will feverishly research everything he can about Daniel _Dreiberg_ , and he doesn’t know what it is that he dreads so much about this research, but he does, he feels guilty and gluttonous, the access he’s going to have –

“Referring to commitment to owl theme? Comes with its perks.”

Ozymandias smiles. He is, regrettably, very beautiful look at, and his smile looks like an advert for mouths. “The flamethrowers?”

“The night flights,” says Rorschach, before he can stop himself. He feels like he’s just shown Ozymandias his jugular. _Here’s my heartbeat._ He shifts his weight to suggest that he’s about to leave and says, “How’s work on the eunuch-maker?”

The flawless mouth pinches. Rorschach can’t tell if it’s a moue of disapproval or a suppressed laugh. “It’s led to some… interesting places. Specifically, a factory producing illegal cantharidin.” He watches Rorschach’s ink blots. “Better known as Spanish fly.”

Rorschach doesn’t know what this is, and makes a noise to suggest disapproval without giving that away. “Ennk. Well, will leave you to your insects. Have an appointment with doctor.”

Ozymandias, who is twinkling, beams sunnily. “Does she know that?”

“Not yet,” says Rorschach, and strides off across the rooftops without saying goodbye, to ensure he gets the last word.

He’s almost at the roof that covers Dr Chea’s head before it occurs to him to wonder why Ozymandias knew the doctor was a woman. Cocktail party address book, he thinks moodily.

The apartment building is a nice one, a carefully maintained 1880s block with large classical windows and a pigeon loft. Dr Chea occupies the top two floors. Rorschach insinuates himself onto a fire escape and peers through the windows until he spots her in a kitchen, sitting at a table and peeling a fist-sized yellow mango with a very small knife. Her nose is still taped up. She has left the window half open and bizarre cooking smells drift out, sharp and foreign.

He readies himself on the balls of his feet, his arms high on the railing above him, then in one fluid movement swings himself through the window, his fist arcing gracefully through the air to land square in the doctor’s stomach.

He hears a small grunt then feels – in his distant way – pain as the doctor flings her foot at his patella. It’s badly managed and she only hits his shin. He kicks the chair out from under her and grabs one of her arms on her way down, wrenching it behind her. Something clicks in her back.

“Move and I’ll break it,” he says, levelly.

The doctor flops from her arm like a fish on the end of a line. “Hello also to you,” she says. She has a strong accent that Rorschach can’t place.

“Know who I am?”

The doctor appears to concentrate. “Roar… sak,” she says, finally, carefully.

“Rorschach.”

“Rawr… slak.”

Rorschach lets it go, though not without a burst of impatience at the immigrants who clutter his city, bringing their homeland grudges to his streets, and don’t bother learning the language properly. “Know what I’ll do if you move?”

“Break my arm.”

“Good.” Rorschach lets her go. She stands up, rolling her shoulder, and delicately puts her chair back in place, before looking up at him, weird and mild like weak tea.

Rorschach takes her in. She’s about five foot, with a thick black bob cropped around her chin and black lashes that point straight downwards rather than curling out, giving the impression that her eyes are roofed by black marquees. He notes a thin seam under each lower lid and threads of white hair, two badly chapped and sore-split hands that have survived too many years being scrubbed with carbolic soap. He guesses she must be around thirty-five. Interesting. The only other woman to leave him with wounds also must have been about thirty-five the last time he saw her, though those wounds were invisible, dealt to a mind and heart that have never really healed.

“Mango?” says this woman now. Rorschach manages to stop himself craning round the door of the kitchen to see if there are any small brown faces peering terrified at the scene, and picks up a piece of mango in a gloved hand. It’s slippery. He lifts his mask with one thumb, just enough to expose his mouth, and tosses it in before he drops it. His whole mouth explodes with sweetness. It makes his tongue ache.

Dr Chea goes back to cutting the rest of the fruit. “You here about the medicine?” she asks.

“In time.” Rorschach produces the knife he was stabbed with from his pocket. The doctor freezes up. He can practically hear her mentally comparing the dagger in his hand and the pathetic little paring knife in hers. He throws it on the table and it lands point up, very satisfyingly, in the wood.

“Professional,” he says, nodding to it. “Japanese steel. Why? Don’t try picking it up. Will take it back. You know I can.”

The doctor’s face is still mild but he sees a muscle under an eye twitch. “Birthday present?” she suggests.

“Funny. Like a joke. Know another one. Goes: what’s more effective than an apple for keeping the doctor away?”

Dr Chea looks a little glum. “Breaking my arm?”

“Heard it already, I see. Try again.”

The doctor puts her mango and knife down. Once again, he can almost hear her thinking.

“It _was_ a birthday present,” she says finally. “From home. I brought it to the USA.” This is pronounced laboriously – You Ett Ay. “I used to keep under my bed.”

“But now need protection?” Rorschach has decided he likes mango. He plucks another piece from the table, undertakes the lift-and-toss.

She appears to think again, then, “Yes.”

“From Big Figure?”

“From Goliath.”

Ah. Finally.

The medicine bottle that Dr Chea had given them had been labelled Excalibur, made by a company called Goliath. (“Very confused branding there,” Daniel had remarked, “like they’ve just pinned an encylopedia of mythology to a wall and thrown darts at it.”) Rorschach was vaguely familiar with Goliath. It was one of the super-pharmacists that the _New Frontiersman_ railed against, for addicting a whole generation of upright young Americans to performance drugs, drugs for the weak-willed so-called illness of depression, drugs for pains easily gritted through, got on with. Rorschach had been surprised that they had branched into treating opiate addiction.

“Goliath wanted you to keep prescribing Excalibur to the whores?”

She nods. If she is aware of the venom behind Rorschach’s choice of words, she doesn’t let it show. Perhaps she thinks it’s the American term.

“Stopped because it turned them back into junkies?”

“It cause them pain. Some of them gave up and went back to heroin. They tell me they report it to Big Figure but he did nothing. Just asked questions about the pain, how it come, where, for how long. For him, I feel, they are an experiment. Like a bunny rabbit in a laboratory.”

Something stirs in the back of Rorschach’s head, the same reptilian sense of anticipation that he gets just before he plunges into a brawl. Big Figure’s hired flesh, used not to provide pleasure but to test pain… but why? And what did he have to do with Goliath?

He’s got enough information. He picks up a last piece of mango. “Most helpful, doctor. Appreciate you hosting here. Know you don’t like men in your office.”

The doctor gives him a lukewarm smile. “Ah, only that other one was a man. In a very bad outfit like a pigeon. You’re not a man.”

Rorschach stiffens. His fists ball. He knows he’s faster than her. If he doesn’t like the next thing that comes out of her mouth, he can break her nose again before she’s pulled the knife out of the table. “No?” he asks, softly, dangerously.

“No. You’re a demon.”

His fists uncurl. The inkblots spread and change in silence. The doctor’s smile broadens.

“Don’t worry. I’m a demon too.”

Rorschach looks down at Dr Chea, past the fans of her lashes into her eyes, and realises that, behind the chronically mild expression, the doctor’s eyes are cold and bright and completely insane.

Walter looks at the dead spark of madness and thinks, _ah, hello_.


	11. Lie to Me

“You went to her _home_?”

It is two nights later. Daniel has returned – prodigal partner – on a Thursday evening, promising Rorschach a ‘long weekend’ of crimefighting, like a husband trying to soothe his wife after too many nights out with the boys.

“Needed information.”

“Jesus, Rorschach, you can’t just bust into people’s houses and knock them about! She’s a civilian, for God’s sake.”

“Stabbed me. Quite uncivilian,” Rorschach replies. “Or did you forget?”

“No, of course I didn’t forget,” says Daniel, dragging both his hands through his hair. A strand breaks free, flops into his eyes. Rorschach feels a strange twist of anger. He imagines taking a pair of sewing scissors to Daniel’s face, cropping off the effeminate flop, fisting Daniel’s hair to pull his head back and forth. Pulling and grabbing.

“Of course I didn’t,” Daniel repeats. “It was horrible. I actually want to – look. You can’t do that again. I looked her up, she’s not a front.”

Rorschach has looked her up too, in between his meticulous research on Daniel Dreiberg (son of a banker, grandson of a banker, second-gen Harvard, a handful of co-published papers, subscriptions to _Nature, National Georgraphic_ and the _Gazette_ ). Sovanni Chea had read medicine at La Faculté de Medicine de Sorbonne Université – “The Sorbonne,” Daniel says, and Rorschach realises this is how you refer to it when you’re familiar with the institution – and had a post-graduate biochemical research masters from the John Hopkins. Despite the lucrative specialism, she’d retrained as a gynaecologist. She got her green card in 1961. She worked with a fair number of addicts and whores, but her record was otherwise faultless.

Daniel is distracted. He hasn’t changed into Nite Owl yet, and is pacing the basement in tan chinos and a cornflower blue shirt. He looks like a scene from a play about summer innocence, not a vigilante. It makes Rorschach’s teeth hurt.

“I want to talk to you about what happened,” Daniel says finally. He can’t look Rorschach in the eye. “I can’t let that happen again.”

Rorschach grunts. “My fault. Wasn’t expecting doctor to be armed, or deranged. Won’t happen again.”

“I just can’t let it,” Daniel says again, as if Rorschach hasn’t spoken.

“ _Won’t_.”

This brings Daniel up short. “No? I’ve seen what you wear under that suit.”

Walter flushes. He is sure the mask is swarming, bending and destroying patterns across his cheeks. “Meaning?”

“Meaning you don’t even have a stab vest! You’re flinging yourself into fights with armed men, _multiple_ armed men, with nothing between you and the afterlife but a couple of layers of cloth!”

“Fine like this,” Rorschach grunts.

“No, you’re not,” Daniel snaps. He picks up a drafting pen from his desk and begins to throw it nervously from hand to hand. He catches it easily, without even looking, the pen describing acrobatic arcs through the air. Rorschach allows that this is pretty impressive.

“I saw how many other scars you have,” Daniel says finally. “Just because you’ve survived until now, it doesn’t mean you’ll keep surviving the next time someone puts a blade in you.”

“Other scars are not deep,” Rorschach says, coolly.

Daniel is suddenly right in front of him, heating the clammy basement air.

“No?” he says, quietly. There is an edge to his voice that sets of Rorschach’s fight-or-fight (he’s never got the hang of fleeing). “What about the one just above your left hip? That healed badly. If I could understand Braille I could have read about what happened on it.”

Rorschach is assailed by the thought of Daniel crouching over him on the cot, engineer’s fingers pattering across his stomach. He feels as if Daniel is dragging him in to his body, word by word, sinking hooks into his brain.

“Wasn’t that deep. Badly sutured. Rookie days.” This isn’t entirely true – there was an infection, there was more blood than Rorschach had seen coming out of his body ever before – but there’s no point in sharing that with Daniel.

“Yeah? And the one that smeared your nipple?” Rorschach doesn’t flinch but he knows the mask shifts in a telltale way. “Thought I didn’t notice that? Go on. Lie to me again.”

“Just a scratch,” Rorschach says, pitching his voice exactly, breathing into his core. Every time Daniel names a scar, he feels the corresponding part of his body perk up, treacherous, like it’s a dog being called by name.

“And that doctor was the first person to take you by surprise, was she? Lie again, Rorschach.”

“Unexpected situation,” says Rorschach, because he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t want to have a whole scene about this.

“And you’re bulletproof too? Lie. Go on. Lie to me.”

Walter unsticks his tongue from the roof of his mouth. Daniel is too close; he can see that his hazel eyes are flecked with green. It’s too much detail to bear.

“Being histrionic, Dreiberg.”

That brings Daniel up short. His head jerks and the hazel eyes go flat, lose their colour.

“Ozymandias knows,” Rorschach says. “Kind enough to tell me.”

Daniel’s face droops. He suddenly looks very, very tired and very, very young.

“I forgot you must know each other,” he says softly. “When did you – no, forget it, I don’t want to know.”

“You told him?” Rorschach asks. Despite how much he resents Daniel giving him so many dimensions of personhood to work with, he also doesn’t like the idea that anyone else has more information than him.

“No. He found out. I think Hollis may have had something to do with it. I know he thinks Ozymandias is a good mask. I suppose he hoped I might be mentored, or something.”

Complicated feelings bob up in the sea in Walter’s brain. He pushes them back under. He does not have time for envy, for hurt pride. He has a job to do, and so does Nite Owl. (He does not have time to feel lonely, however fleeting.)

“And I still don’t even know what you look like, let alone your name,” says Daniel. He sounds miserable now. “You must think I’m just an amateur. Lecturing you about stab vests.”

Rorschach hesitates. He _does_ , in a lot of ways, think Daniel is an amateur, with all the softness and weakness this entails. But he also thinks Daniel is a technical genius, a fearless fighter and a good person. This last realisation hits him like a grand piano off the roof. He wonders the last time he thought ‘good person’ about anyone.

“Think you need to stop telling strange men in your basement what your name is,” he mutters. “Other than that, think you’re doing fine.”

Daniel smile with half his mouth. It has an oddly sweetening effect to his classical looks. “Strange men, eh?”

“Won’t dignify that with a response. Have a job to do, Daniel. Need to talk to some of Big Figure’s ‘accident’ victims, maybe pay a visit to Goliath.”

Daniel tugs at his lower lip with his fingers, seemingly a nervous tic, before turning away suddenly and walking up the stairs. “Come on,” he calls down. “Let’s do this upstairs.”

Rorschach feels alarm flare again. “Inviting strange men into your home now?” he snaps.

“Yeah. You know my name and my face. You might as well come and have a look at my kitchen.” He pauses, twinkles down at Rorschach. “See where the magic happens. What’s the secret to Dan Dreiberg’s scrambled eggs? The answer is: I accidentally crack the shell into the saucepan. Flavour country!”

He disappears through the door.

Rorschach stands, considers his options.

“Come on, Francisco!” Daniel yells from a mysterious upstairs floor.

Rorschach gives in and follows.


	12. A Taste of Honey

In his future, Rorschach will describe 1965 as the year he teamed up with Nite Owl to bring down Big Figure. Twelve months will be flattened into a single image, triumphant and masculine. He will remember it as if it were a heavily saturated photograph. He will force himself to remember it this way.

These are the things he buries.

The first time Rorschach enters Daniel’s kitchen, Daniel makes them coffee and fried eggs. He fries the eggs in butter and puts grated yellow cheese on top. Rorschach thinks it’s the most decadent thing he’s ever eaten. The butter has burned– Daniel is not, despite what his apron says, The World’s Best Cook – and it leaves a taste of smoke that haunts Rorschach’s mouth all evening. He rarely thinks about flavour, beyond ‘sweet’ and ‘not sweet’; it is for this reason, he decides, that, after they’ve eaten, and Daniel stretches his arms above his head, revealing a long lozenge of flesh between trousers and shirt, Rorschach’s mouth waters.

This is also the first time Rorschach is forced to lift his mask while facing Daniel. He sits the latex just on the end of his nose. He takes off his coat, his gloves, his scarf. He is aware of just how hard Daniel stares at his jaw. He cannot disapprove. It’s sensible, professional even, for Daniel to try and note any identifiable features. He has Daniel’s full name, his history; he has seen inside Daniel’s house, seen the street outside his window. He has rummaged around in Daniel’s life like a cat going through a box of wool. He can allow the man a look at his chin.

They go out on patrol, though the night is surprisingly quiet. They put the scares on a few hangers-on in the bars, compile a list of ‘accident’ victims to talk to. Their leads on Goliath are harder to pick up, but Rorschach doesn’t mind. He can feel the investigation coming together. It reminds him of the brisk click of a tumbler sliding in a lock as a pick finds its way home. 

A couple of days later, Walter sits in his kitchen bathtub in an orange wash of dawn light. He has been up for half an hour already. There is a mirror propped up on the cheap laminate sideboard, beside the hotplate. The kitchen is so small that Walter can use this mirror if he decides to shave while having his weekly bath. Greying water laps at the bone-and-muscle weapon that carries his soul. He doesn’t look at it unless he needs to clean it.

He regards his own mouth. Walter has an exacting memory that stores details in brutal order, but he’s not sure he’d be able to pick his own face out on the street. He is good at erasing himself. There is nothing remarkable or beautiful about the visage in the mirror, freckled over like a moulding wall. He wonders what Daniel has retained of the chunk of face he saw. He puts down the razor and touches his lips experimentally. They are hard and chapped. He touches the knuckles of his right hand with the fingertips on his left. Hard and chapped. He tries the skin under his wiry hair, digging his nails into his scalp. _You’re a redhead_ , he remembers. Warmth gathers in a part of him under the water. He stares at the vivid shade bleeding between his fingers and watches a blush travel across his cheeks.

The days get longer and the weather gets warmer. Rorschach is forced to switch coats. Windows are cracked open across New York. Music and voices drift onto the street. It is suddenly May; it is suddenly almost June. Daniel invites Rorschach up to his kitchen before and sometimes after patrols and Rorschach is again amazed at how much space Daniel takes up, shimmying into the foggy unclaimed edges of Rorschach’s nights, spanning more and more hours in Rorschach’s week. He accepts approximately one third of the time. He refuses to go further into the house than the kitchen. He cannot explain why.

The melancholy of summer begins to creep up on Rorschach and he patrols more often, with Nite Owl when he’s in the city and alone if not, keen to rid himself of this indulgent, baseless emotion. The justice he metes out distracts him best, sharpening all of his senses into his fists.

One afternoon at the garment warehouse, listening to co-workers energetically discuss weekend plans, Walter feels a sudden piercing pain in his chest. Has he, somehow, absent-mindedly swallowed a pin? But every pin is in place between his lips.

Daniel calls him Harry, calls him Igor, calls him Juan. Rorschach shrugs it off each time. They toss quips to one another through the limpid summer air. They work hard, to the displeasure of their small-time foes. Their investigations suggest that Big Figure has begun what Daniel witheringly refers to as a ‘funding drive’ – in addition to forcing debt-ridden junkies to stage accidents and use the insurance money to pay of their debts, he is also selling off some of the his more tawdry, less front-facing skin establishments to minor gangsters. Back-room bodyguards and guns for hire tell Bird and Blot that Big Figure is in the process of meeting Goliath executives, but they don’t know why. They begin to run into barriers higher than a wall of fists. Goliath is a legitimate private business. They can’t just kick the doors in and beat up the receptionists until someone tells them where the crimes are happening.

The anti-medicine Excalibur does not crop up anywhere else. Nite Owl looks into it as Daniel Dreiberg, heir of the Dreiberg fortune, a man potentially interested in investing in Goliath’s stocks, but Excalibur has vanished.

“I mean, it’s obvious what’s happening,” Daniel says one evening, post-patrol, heating leftovers on the hob. “Big Figure wants to use Excalibur to replace standard methadone treatment so that junkies hooked on his product never recover. A lot of his girls go to Dr Chea, so he arranged for Excalibur to be pushed at her clinic. I imagine they’ve changed the name and maybe some of the components of the product, and they’re going to start pushing it under that name instead.”

Rorschach rolls his eyes behind the mask; the mask remains as inscrutable as ever. “Limited results for significant effort,” he mutters. “Chea stopped using Excalibur once she saw what happened, imagine other doctors would do the same. To arrange for distribution, would need substantial influence at Goliath, a multi-million dollar enterprise. Why squander on addicts? Must be something else.”

Daniel makes a melodious little buzz at the back of his throat, a ‘hmm’ with harmonics. He puts a plate of what looks like beef stew in front of Rorschach. “What do you think we should do?” he asks.

Rorschach tugs his mask up and allows Daniel his moment of scrutiny the way he might tolerate the saying of grace before eating. “Can’t make the mountain come to us; must go to the mountain,” he replies, picking up his fork. “Find out who captains research and distribution at Goliath. Names, photos. Rich men, of course. Men who can buy anything in city that sells anything. Drugs, sex, sin. We’ll find one on our beat.”

Daniel grins at him. “Oh boy. Do you _promise_?”

“Human nature never lets me down,” Rorschach says drily.

Daniel laughs. He is sporting a pale violet bruise on his cheekbone, throwing off the symmetry of his clean-cut, boyish face. They’d interrupted a mugging in progress on the way back to the Nest, and had dispatched five men armed with kitchen knives. When they’d got back, Daniel had pulled off Nite Owl’s hood and shown Rorschach the bruise with something approaching delight. “The look on his face when he cracked me!” Daniel crowed. “He _knew_ he’d fucked up.”

Rorschach knows what he means, because he remembers seeing the fist, armoured with knuckle dusters, connect with Nite Owl’s face, and then the change that came over Nite Owl. He’d turned _dark_ , is the only way Rorschach can describe it. Something had welled up in Nite Owl in the time it took to whip his head back round to face his assailant. He was suddenly twice as fast and twice as violent.

And Rorschach had felt equalled. He’d felt _met_ , on some strange plane he was used to occupying alone. And he’d felt something else, something to do with grace in brutality, something to do with the way Nite Owl’s body cut through the air like a knife.

Now, gazing at the bruise on Daniel’s cheek, Rorschach is pinned to his chair by a swelling, sensuous ache, occurring to him somewhere below the table. He drops his fork with a clatter. His appetite has vanished.

“What’s this music,” he growls, to distract Daniel, who has looked up from his 2am dinner with raised eyebrows.

Before Daniel cooks, he likes to put on the radio, or else he wanders into the living room (which Rorschach has never entered) and plays a record with the door open, so that it can just be heard in the kitchen. Tonight is a record player night.

“Oh, um,” Daniel blinks, “it’s the new Chet Baker album. His trumpet was stolen and he made a whole album with a borrowed flugelhorn –“

“Jazz?”

“Yes, he –“

“Degenerate music.” The pressure is decreasing. Rorschach picks up his fork again. He cocks his head towards the open door. “Evident in lyrical choice. Of course honey tastes sweeter than wine; unnecessary discovery, could have been made teetotal.”

Daniel’s mouth quirks. “The thing is, Kelvin,” he says, “I think it’s a _metaphor_.”

Rorschach finishes chewing, drops his fork again. He has made short work of the meal. Daniel’s plate it still half full. “Metaphors are also degenerate,” he replies. “Patriotic citizens should be satisfied with plain American English. Poetry breeds impurity.”

A gentle clink as Daniel taps his fork against his plate. “I can never tell when you’re joking about this sort of thing,” he murmurs, half-smiling, eyes downcast.

Rorschach watches him. The bruise is so vivid on his fair skin. He wonders how much pressure Daniel could tolerate on it. Fingers? Heel of hand? Mouth? _No –_

“Daniel?”

“Kristopher?”

“Jokes are degenerate.”

“Oh my _God_ ,” Daniel bursts out, and pushes his chair away from the table. But he is laughing, Rorschach sees. He drags his hands through his hair. “You’re the _worst_.”

Rorschach essays a sardonic salute. Daniel is pacing now, dinner forgotten, so Rorschach tugs Daniel’s plate to his side of the table. “Listen,” Daniel says to him, “as well as tailing Goliath executives, why don’t we work the other side of the barricade? We could ask your doctor about what she was told about Excalibur.”

“Not _my_ doctor,” Rorschach says, a trifle louder than necessary.

The issue here is that Rorschach has seen Dr Chea a handful of times since coming through her window and eating her mango. He had, petulantly, wanted to prove a point. He had been nettled by the discovery that Ozymandias knew the identity of Nite Owl II, a little burnt by the fact Ozymandias seemed to know he was visiting Dr Chea. Ozymandias was evidently keeping tabs on Dr Chea, so Rorschach had decided that he was going to keep tabs on Dr Chea as well.

It’s obvious why Dr Chea is of interest to Ozymandias. She comes home very late at night, upright and intact despite walking the most dangerous route she can choose on the long journey from the Village to Harlem. When she gets in, she washes bloodstained knives in her kitchen sink then sharpens them at the table. She is probably the phantom castrator, or one of a team of ghostly ball-slicers, slinking through lower Manhattan. Rorschach does not exactly disapprove of her work, so he extends Ozymandias the courtesy of not dumping her in front of a police station with her elbows broken. He’s sure the golden boy has a plan.

More to the point, Rorschach finds Dr Chea’s company restful. She is not a she but an _it_ , like a tree or a snake; she is, as she occasionally reminds him on his late-night visits, a demon, and tolerates his presence because she believes him to be another demon. She is quite insane, and Walter is interested in this, interested in the way the person named Sovanni Chea occasionally recedes and a blank-eyed, wall-faced thing crawls to the surface. When he watches her sink into herself, madness seeping over her face, he feels like he’s watching the demonstration of some unusual art form.

He is not unaware that she is a woman somewhat his senior, who occasionally gives him snacks, and listens with interest to his stories about the physical damage he does in pursuit of the city’s spiritual healing. Walter is not stupid. He asks her, once, to assuage a nagging nerviness, whether she has any children, and Dr Chea’s face goes blank in a new way before she says, “No. Not possible. Not after What Happened.” Walter has no interest in What Happened, but he is relieved.

He has mentioned these interactions to Daniel, briefly, who is baffled by the turn of events. “You’ve made friends with her? She tried to kill you! Oh, well, as long as she keeps her hands where you can see them.” He notes that Daniel seems ruffled by the news, but puts this down to the fact that, of the three masks operating in the city, Nite Owl is the only one who does not have Dr Chea at a disadvantage. In the meantime, he eats Dr Chea’s snacks and idly waits for the moment Ozymandias brings her in.

When Rorschach goes home for the evening, sneaking through the tunnel that leads away from the Nest, he reminds himself that he has accepted Daniel’s invitations twice in a row now, and should turn down four future invitations.

But when he emerges from the warehouse, he is startled by how fine and airy the night is. It is gone 3am, and though New York could never be silent, it is muted, murmuring tenderly to its rats and pigeons and punks. Rorschach hears someone sigh, and it takes him a few seconds to realise the noise has come from him. He feels loose in his limbs and tries to put it down to tiredness. He has never been good with summer. He burns too easily, for a start.

He thinks about Daniel’s bruise, his small half-smile. In his memory, Nite Owl’s shoulders flex and his fists land hard and true. He wonders about the things for which honey could be a metaphor, sweeter and more intoxicating than any wine.


	13. The Summer Begins

June comes, in all its parched and stinking horror. The garbage cooks on the street. Walter sleeps on top of the thin blankets on his bed, awoken from strange dreams by his body’s wheedling and twitching. The body’s wordless pleading is worse in the summer too, in the heat. Its need is focused, sinking into the knot of nerves between his leg. He tries to receive it and put it aside, as he does with pain, but each time he receives it, the pressure mounts appallingly.

If he lays the flat of his palm against the length of that place, that thing, or holds a ring of two fingers and a thumb around the base, his mind immediately swarms with images: a slightly-too-full lower lip; thoughtful fingers at Archie’s controls, deftly manipulating the craft; the hard plans of a body enhanced and caressed by a skin-tight costume; toes stretching and popping as their tired owner massages them out of weather-inappropriate boots. The musk of a young man sweating through Kevlar.

If he keeps his hand down there, lets it move, starts to tug, breath coming in bursts through his nose, the images buckle in grotesque ways. He hyperfocuses on the mouth, the toes, the firm ridges of the abs. His mind betrays him, lets him imagine licking the sweat running down from a neck into the feathery curls of brown hair on a broad chest. He makes a mess, instantly. He’s so sickened by what he’s done that he bites the inside of his cheek hard enough to make it bleed.

It’s not just the mess.

It’s how he’s getting there.

He keeps going there.

_Whoreson. Filthy fucking mongrel._

Walter reasons that the body is reacting grotesquely because it is receiving so much stimulus. It was never like this with Luis; he was pleased by him, visually, but their companionship was glancing and polite and over so soon that Walter doesn’t even mourn it. He tells himself that the body simply requires disciplining, to curb indulgence. Its appetites come from access to the glut of material; it’s a junkie for the sight, sound and smell of Nite Owl.

He runs cold water in the kitchen bathtub, lies curled in the inch-high wash and waits for the dawn. It works, but he is exhausted the whole next day.

He tries to deprive the body of its soft things, halt its sluttish langour. He sleeps on the floor. He eats a slice of white bread spread thinly with margarine and sprinkled with sugar for three meals in a row, feels the hunger like a fist in his stomach. He sits on the roof of his tenement in his shirtsleeves, watches his arms pinken and peel. When he pulls on the latex mask, the skin of his cheeks hums with a vicious soreness. It works, but it’s never permanent. The body keeps reasserting itself.

He dives into brawls with renewed energy, hungry to take on pain. The trouble is, even the most delinquent street-side criminal needs momentum to go from 0 to 100, from ‘you lookin’ at me?’ to broken noses. It can only take seconds, but seconds is still too slow. Rorschach is always at 100. The first punch he lands is often the last. He means to harm. The pain he’s dealt helps a little, but not enough.

He chews the skin off the side of his nails, peels it back so the pads of his fingers are tenderised. He wants to make touching unpleasurable. He does not want to keep thinking about smoothing back the licks of hair on the top of Daniel’s head, which stick up even after hours under the cowl.

He talks to Sam Spade in his head, but he struggles to imagine Sam’s responses to – this, this thing that is happening to him, this perverse _thing_. He needs _someone_ to talk to about _something_. So he stands in Dr Chea’s kitchen and tells her about teeth tinkling merrily into gutters, shoes slipping on blood. She nods and smiles and pushes a plates of strange snacks towards him – green leaf parcels filled with sticky rice, sweet gelatinous yolk-yellow discs, grassy jellies.

He eats, monologues, notes the demented spark at the back of her eyes, like something is holding a lit match in her skull. She is sinking deeper and deeper into the demon. He wonders what will happen when Sovanni Chea is gone completely. Walter finds himself envying her. He thinks he’s watching her leave her body behind; it’s just a decorative façade behind which the demon sits in perfect meditation. How can he do this? Who will teach him this rare, rare art?

He welcomes distractions that do not remind him of Daniel – of the shy, humorous, reckless young student hidden by Nite Owl – so he recounts gory stories from his early days as a mask, when he worked alone. Dr Chea is most interested in the physical technique of violence (the demon is a doctor, after all), but one visit he describes an investigation that took him out of the city proper, to a water distribution plant that supplies the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Rorschach remembers it well; he’d disrupted, in typically vengeful and visceral style, the planned dumping of hallucinogens in the water by a group of shiftless hippies railing disgracefully against the authority of the American state, the so-called ‘conservative mindset’. Idiots. _Children_ would have drunk that water.

Dr Chea is so interested setting the scene for this gruesome morality tale that he sketches a diagram of the inside of the plant (his memory is not affected by _this_ , this summer horror that is happening, and what he produces is accurate enough to be a crude map). She praises it, says, “Wow!”, which she pronounces ‘vow’, and sticks it on her refrigerator.

The act is a trope that Walter recognises. He has, admittedly, never personally experienced it, because when he was a child – when he was a child – he – but, anyway, he recognises the trope. He feels chilly and weightless, as if he is on the point of fainting. His stomach churns. He wants, suddenly, to hit Dr Chea until her face slides off her head. He is away through the window before she has turned away from admiring the drawing. He does not go back for a while, which means he is alone with his treacherous body, his fizzing brain, his volumes and volumes of words unsaid.

Summer fistfights. Bird and Blot patrol. They investigate tenaciously. They intercept a Goliath executive picking up cocaine from a rather more exclusive dealer than they are used to dealing with. They find out Big Figure is interested in _pain treatment by opiates_ , is in meetings with Goliath executives about _alternatives_ to this _difficult, addictive substance._

Nite Owl thinks this means nudge nudge wink wink let’s buy more opiates and keep the junkies on it. Rorschach doesn’t. Rorschach thinks Big Pharma is plotting something to deaden the minds of good Americans. They bicker about it. They agree to break in to Goliath and do a little recon almost by accident, in the middle of an argument about vaccination.

Rorschach accepts fewer invitations up to Daniel’s kitchen, hoping to cut the body’s supply of dream material off at the source.

One evening Nite Owl is so uncomfortable in the uniform – evidently designed in cooler weather, never worn in New York’s humid summer – that he starts stripping off in Archie, on their way back to the Nest, and Rorschach is horrified to find himself in the ship with a half-naked Daniel. Nite Owl is shed. The body beside him rolls its shoulders; its mouth asks him if he is not ‘super gross’ under all those layers.

“Fine like this,” mutters Rorschach, staring out over New York.

The owlship is one of the few places where Rorschach can indulge in pure, unfettered fantasy. He loves flying. He loves then sense of literally rising above the scum, washing clean by the cool evening air. He understands a little of what obsessed Daniel so much about birds, but while for Daniel the obsession turns on the life of the animal, for Rorschach – for Walter – it’s the abstract art of flight. Sometimes he daydreams about flying the ship across the city, across the country, across continents, eating up the miles, all the way down to Antarctica and back. He feels incredibly purely about their night flights, and now he knows this will never be the same again.

Daniel whistles ‘Summertime’ to himself as he brings Archie down to the Nest. He has a pitch-perfect whistle, as tuneful as a song, and Rorschach finds this troubling. He is bothered by this random example of skill that isn’t of use for fighting or fixing the ills of New York, that is useful for nothing but its own beauty.

It has been several weeks since Rorschach last came up to the kitchen. They’d eaten while on patrol (takeaway noodles from a vendor in Chinatown who served them with trembling hands, who’d tried to offer it on the house, though Nite Owl always pays) but he knows Daniel will always ask him in for coffee. He doesn’t know whether it would be better to say ‘no’ and limit his exposure to these outbreaks of beauty, deadly as plague, or say ‘yes’ and avoid arousing suspicion about the places his body has been dragging his brain.

Daniel is already stepping into the basement. With a wriggle and a hop, he’s coming out of the Nite Owl suit, exchanging it for a pair of athletic pants with H A R V A R D printed down the side. Rorschach stands frozen at the bottom of Archie’s ramp, hands balled into fists in his pockets. He is taking in the scene in full Technicolor detail and he knows he’s going to hate himself for it later.

“I have a couple of bottles of cold Coke in the fridge,” Daniel calls over his shoulder, going up the stairs.

It is Walter, not Rorschach, who says, “Oh, great,” and it comes out totally New Jersey. Daniel gives him a sudden, spectacular smile, as if Rorschach has dropped a bouquet of roses in his lap, but doesn’t say anything.

Rorschach comes up to the kitchen. In his head he is listing all the things he mustn’t do – stay too long, sit too close, slip up with his accent again. He moves himself like a chess piece, exact and precise. Daniel is popping the top off two green bottles. “God, this is what I needed. I’m cooking in that suit.” He’s still topless and his big shoulders are shining with sweat. There’s a couple of pimples on his back, engorged by the heat and oil from his skin. Rorschach tries to find that disgusting. He tries so hard.

Daniel tips a bottle towards Rorschach, who takes it, avoiding Daniel’s fingers. The bottle is deliciously cool. Walter doesn’t own a refrigerator. This is the coldest thing he’s touched for weeks. He is acutely aware of how hot he is under the shirt, suit jacket and trench coat. The raw skin on his cheeks stings under the latex. He is gripped with a wild desire to rip the mask off and press the cold Coke to his face.

“Really staring at that bottle, buddy,” says Daniel.

“Anticipation whets the edge of reward,” retorts Rorschach. “As will be the case when we bring Big Figure in.”

“You tell me the sweetest things,” says Daniel cheerfully. This wouldn’t have bothered Rorschach a few months ago – maybe he would have had his own repartee – but tonight he feels utterly flummoxed. Why won’t Daniel put a shirt on and stop talking about sweet things? He jerks the mask up and takes a deep swig, to give himself something to do.

“Hey,” says Daniel. The tone is casual, much too casual. It smacks of rehearsal in a mirror. “Listen. It’s like an armpit in here. Why don’t we go and sit on the roof?”

Rorschach stares at him. He hopes his set mouth and jaw are doing the work of a death glare. “Am in _uniform_ , Daniel.”

“We’ll stay hidden… You’re good at hiding.”

It’s almost an accusation. Rorschach shows Daniel a sliver of his teeth through his lips – a smile without warmth – and pulls the mask down again. But he doesn’t leave the room. He doesn’t say no.

“Go on, Maurice,” says Daniel. “You can sit on my chimney and point out all my security errors.”

This does actually sound like Rorschach’s idea of a good time. He cants his head very slightly. It could be consideration, it could be agreement. Daniel takes it and runs with it. “This way! We have to go up the back of the house.”

For the first time in The Partnership, Rorschach enters a new room. They step out through the living room window and begin to climb the footholds on the handily reinforced drainpipe, bottles in pockets. There’s a garden below them. Walter’s never lived anywhere a green thing can grow, unless mould counts. He is, once again, amazed at just how much space Daniel Dreiberg can occupy. When they climb past what must be a bedroom, he tries to unsee, unknow, but he’s already able to plan in perfect, strategic detail how he’d get in to Daniel’s room. If he needed to.

They sneak across the flat roof and insinuate themselves between the stacks. It’s dark and Daniel’s form is grainy in the shadow. Rorschach is relieved. He settles with his back against a flue.

“Cheers,” says Daniel, raising his bottle – the movement is just visible. Rorschach responds in kind. They sit in silence for a few seconds, then Rorschach grits his teeth. He has to do it. He has to take the plunge. He has to look danger in the eye and spit.

His trench and jacket need to come off.

Summer in New York is _too damn hot_.

“OK there?” asks Daniel.

“Will be.” With a grunt, Rorschach is free of his sleeves. The back of his shirt is tacky with sweat. “Thermostat in hell up too high again.”

“I hear you,” says Daniel with feeling.

The silence, companionable if sweaty, returns.

“I come up here, sometimes, when I can’t sleep,” says Daniel. “After patrols.”

He swallows another mouthful of Coke, though surely he must be near the bottom of the bottle.

“Don’t have that problem. Always ready for sleep. Punch a bit harder, should wear you out.”

Daniels snorts. “Thanks for the advice. Any other wisdom? Karate chop more necks for a long life?”

“Stop taking strange men onto your roof and showing them access points to your bedroom.”

This gets a proper laugh. The shadow by him shifts, and then there’s pressure against his shoulder and upper arm. Daniel is leaning against him.

“I should be so lucky,” Daniel says, his voice twinkling with amusement.

There should be panic, Rorschach knows. He should be flooded with something acidic, palate-cleansing, something that force him to widen the space between their bodies again. He should be swimming in shame, in fury. He should feel his heart rate scream off the scale.

He doesn’t feel any of it.

He stares at the green Coke bottle in his hand, as if there might be an answer there.

Daniel settles against him. “God, we stink,” he murmurs. He doesn’t seem particularly upset by it.

Rorschach takes his weight with his back bold upright.

“Always liked the rooftops,” he says, suddenly. “High as I could get. Pavement through the sky with no pedestrians.”

“Why Rorschach… that’s poetry. You’re a poet. What a lot I don’t know about you.”

The only noise that Rorschach can think to make in response is, “Hurm.”

It's too close for dawn for him to linger long. He knows he needs to leave. But he takes the seconds, feels each one, lets, for just a fragment of a moment, his whole body be there.


	14. All Cats Are Grey at Night

The heat in the garment warehouse is like a clenched fist. Walter’s shirt is patched with sweat. He is working, like the rest of the shift, on a series of vibrant sundresses. Like the other men in this section, he is generally used for ready-to-wear and occasional made-to-measure menswear, but a big order has come in and every spare hand at the warehouse is needed to fulfil it.

Walter doesn’t enjoy working with womenswear. It’s been some time since he was forced to handle women’s clothing. It used to happen all the time at his old place of work, especially when he started out and was given the easiest, cheapest patterns (skirts, A-line frocks, overalls). He hates dresses most of all. With dresses, from the bolts of fabric, he is forced to compile the ghost of a woman’s body, headless and limbless, reduced to her worst parts. He wants nothing to do with this repetitive conjuring of female phantoms, but a job is a job.

His mind drifts – unusual, for him, unusual for his grim diligence and his famous concentration, but then again, his mind doesn’t want to keep seeing the bodies beneath the fabric.

He remembers the mask in its earliest incarnation, the black shapes pooling and curling in perfect symmetry from a mystically understood centre line, the silhouette of the Kitty Genovese who never wore it obliterated by the patterns. He thinks of Alta watching him: _you god damn fairy_.

He thinks again of those insults: fairy, faggot, queer. He still struggles to conceive of these words with the same vehemence as whore or slut. He knows what a whore is. A whore is a woman whose body is an open wound, which she allows men to penetrate and infect, spreading a sort of physical and mental disease of erotics. A whore is a hole, and everything in the hole, that enters the hole, is filth.

But fairies and faggots…

(The fabric bunches under the needle and Walter sews a row of rucks and crevasses. He does not sigh or click his tongue with frustration, because these are _people things_ designed to invite engagement and sympathy, and he has never needed either. He turns the wheel of the machine, releases the ruined dress.)

Of course his fixation on Daniel Dreiberg is unhealthy and abnormal. He knows this because he can contrast it with Daniel’s glowing normality: his green Coke bottles; the soothing, muted, early-autumn tones of his hair, eyes and skin; his ease and familiarity; the abundance of his generosity, which speak of a man with nothing at all to hide and everything good to give. How many other such young men – normal and clean and clean-living – would voluntarily dirty their hands as Nite Owl does, a vital worker in the sewage factory of underground New York? Daniel is a good person.

When he thinks about Daniel, his body reacts abnormally, like a starving thing. It wants to make messes. He doesn’t know what it wants _exactly_. Sometimes he has woken up from dreams he would rather not try to remember, face-down on his bed, with a throbbing hardness trapped between his stomach and the mattress. He knows from depressing experience that if he does not quickly bring his waking body under his control, it will churn of its own accord against the bedcovers, taking him with it into three seconds of mindless oblivion and several irritable minutes of clean-up. He feels tricked by it, used by it.

(The spool thread slips free of loop-taker. He frees another dress, re-loops.)

Is that what he wants with Daniel? When he thinks about Daniel’s lovely lower lip, the gleam of muscles in his stomach, the hollow below his Adam’s apple pooling with sweat, is he thinking of gathering it all to him? Is he thinking about lying flush against him, rolling his body against him, until he is all body and no mind and he comes undone over Daniel’s stomach?

(He has to take a moment. He suddenly cannot remember how to thread the spool thread, something he has mindlessly done a thousand times before.)

Is that what faggots do? It’s messy, it’s true, but it doesn’t seem quite as bad as being a whore. Women are unclean by nature, queers merely by accident.

Men can’t be holes like whores, after all.

(He begins sewing again.)

They don’t have a hole like that.

(He stops crisp at the end of a seam, switches to the backstitch.)

Well.

That is.

Surely not.

_Surely not_.

(Walter presses much too hard on the pedal and the fabric streams off the edge of the table. A second ruined dress in ten minutes. Impossible. Impossible!)

_Impossible!_

(He stands abruptly.)

He feels as if his heart and lungs have been evaporated and replaced with cold smoke. He replays all the times he’d heard ‘faggot’ spat with such vehemence, such fear.

No wonder –

_No wonder_ –

(The foreman raises his eyebrows, taps his watch. Walter ignores him, head down, making his way to the toilets at the back of the building. Their breaks are closely monitored and he will not have long, but he needs to lock himself away somewhere, just for three minutes. Just to think. Just to _think_.)

Is that what men do together?

Is that what his body wants?

Walter has not had much of a formal sexual education; most of what he knows about sex has been learnt involuntarily, in sickening situations, and given a crude medicinal spin from the brisk lessons taught by the school nurse at the Charlton Home. Since leaving the Home, he has not taken any steps to broaden his education. It did not seem like a lesson worth learning. And no one, at any point, had ever explained to him what men do to men, or what women do to women, beyond teaching him the words _queer, fairy, faggot, dyke_. It seemed elementary – if they weren’t doing it while cutting someone’s throat or robbing them of their purses, he didn’t see why he needed to get involved. If anything, the sex acts of queers seemed theoretically cleaner and better than what he’d seen – when he was a child – he’d seen – there was –

(He locks himself in a cubicle. His hands are shaking and he looks at them with detached interest. The whole body is in pandemonium. He wonders if it will shake hard enough to set him free, a prison cell finally broken by an internal earthquake.)

How would that feel? Wouldn’t it feel – wouldn’t it feel like illness, maybe? Something wrong in the body? Surely it would hurt quite a lot?

He thinks back to what he knows of the heterosexual romantic tropes, which he has reluctantly gleaned from watching films noirs and reading the occasional novel. Romance, he understands, is a violent and frightening thing. It makes people sick. Yearning looks like pain, _feels_ like pain, but it is a welcomed pain. Romance is a way to invite mess and cruelty into a life. It looks indistinguishable from hatred: the tears, the panic, the gripping hand.

Maybe it’s supposed to hurt?

(From a locked door in his head, seeping under the frame like blood: _Ooh, baby! You’re hurting me! Oh yes! Yes! You’re hurting me!_ )

No wonder Alta spat the word _fairy_ so hard.

He takes a deep, shaky breath.

Is this what his body wants? This violence?

Who can he _ask_?

He can’t ask Daniel. That’s out of the question. Daniel is much too good to know about this kind of thing, and anyway, if he asks Daniel, then Daniel might correctly suspect that he is a deviant. It could destroy The Partnership, and even if he is monstrously unwell, he owes it to The Partnership to hold it together long enough to bring Big Figure down. Also, if he asks Daniel and Daniel suspects something rotten in him, then Daniel might stop casually leaning against him. (He is appalled by how quickly this thought bubbles up, before he can stop it.)

He thinks, briefly, of Dr Chea, but he has not seen Dr Chea since she pinned his drawing to her refrigerator door and unnerved him beyond belief. Besides (he forces himself to recall, annoyed at how cloudy and stupid he is being), Dr Chea loathes men, works exclusively with the bodies of women, and, as far as he understands the evidence, deals with men’s sex only to cut them off. She would be no help either.

Walter has just got to the end of a very short list.

He has no one else to talk to.

Something squeezes in his chest. He has never named loneliness, and so he doesn’t know what to call it when it arrives.

And then a name suggests itself.

Walter winces.

He pulls himself together and returns to his station. But his focus is a little better, now, because he has a plan. He always works a little more smartly, a little sharper, when he has a plan as Rorschach. Walter is a mess, but Rorschach is a fixer.

The hours pass. They are the same as most other hours Walter has sewed through for years, though these are unusually hot. When the shift bell goes, he stands and leaves without a backward glance.

He considers allowing himself dinner at the bar in the Gunga Diner – some ersatz meat and chips, perhaps – but then remembers that his body is a crime scene, and forces it to eat cold beans and swallow a mug of water in his apartment for the evening meal.

Remembering who he is going to try and find, he sluices himself with cool water and the tooth-coloured sliver of soap in the kitchen bathtub. He starts sweating again as soon as he puts the shirt on. Never mind. At least it’s new sweat. As soon as the mask comes on, it’s Rorschach’s sweat, and Rorschach doesn’t care about his body’s lamentations.

When the dark is deep enough, Rorschach sets out for SoHo.

There are dozens and dozens of crimes in New York City. They grow out of the gutters like dandelions. They breed like the pigeons. All vigilantes – a term he grudgingly applies to the three-month-stint hobbyists as well as the experts – work on patrol, interrupting muggings, street-corner drug deals, assaults sexual and otherwise, and general corrupt nighttime behaviour. Rorschach likes patrols. There is something beautifully mathematical about patrol. Crime = punch. Rorschach’s fist is the essential, inevitable end of the equation. He likes their faces, too, when they see him coming. He likes it when they try to run.

Rorschach, of course, like Sam Spade, is also a detective. (Why else would he dress like this, if not to signal his intent to find the crime that doesn’t lurk on the pavement like dropped chewing gum?) He specialises in burglaries, vandalism, disrupting complex drug chains.

He _has_ worked on cases with skin rings, of course, because mob bosses who sell drugs also tend to sell flesh. But generally speaking, the sins of the body – the prostitution rings – and the situations that require much more in the way of _people skills_ – hostage situations, runaway teens – tend to fall to Ozymandias. Neither of them had decided this would be the case, and when Rorschach started, there was plenty of crossover. It’s just how things have panned out. The delineation is starker with each passing month.

He doesn’t know if Ozymandias has abandoned the case of the phantom castrator (or castrators) out of respect for his friendship, such as it is, with Dr Chea, or if he is playing a long game with the man mutilators in which Dr Chea is merely a pawn. He suspects the latter is far more likely than the former. Regardless, the case is apparently on hiatus, and Ozymandias has most recently been reported investigating a brothel. The detail of the brothel stood out, because the trafficked whores were all young men. _Rent boys_ , he remembers the papers saying.

He actually finds Ozymandias – gleaming armour and all – in an alley that is wet with the steam from a refuse pipe coming out of the side of a building. The stink of chlorine hangs in the air. The walls of the alley are downy with moss.

“Rorschach! To what do I owe the pleasure?” Ozymandias is squatting down, peering into a box of garbage, piled on more garbage. It’s an odd sight, like watching a fresco from the roof of the Sistine Chapel root through a dumpster.

Rorschach has thought long and hard about how he’s going to broach this subject. _How do men have sex with men?_ He’s going to have to take a roundabout route. “Some questions about the cantharidin case,” he grunts. (He has since looked up what Spanish fly is, and felt obscurely ribbed.) “Investigating illicit drug distribution with Nite Owl. Potential crossover.”

Ozymandias gives him a 500-wattage smile. “How is young Dreiberg?” he asks, pleasantly.

“Not here asking questions.”

This gets a chuckle. “I’m sorry, I forgot that your tolerance for small talk is matched only by your tolerance for people. Let’s not do this here, though, it’s too warm to think and I need to get these somewhere a bit more salubrious.” As he speaks, he hefts the box onto his shoulders. “There’s a fire escape on the other side of this building. Let’s get to the roof.”

They walk a little further up the alley, find the fire escape and begin to climb. The box on Ozymandias’s shoulder makes a very strange noise – a thin little wail – as it bumps.

On the roof, they slip into the shadow provided by a towering chrome rainwater tank. Ozymandias lowers the box. Something pops its face out, looks around, and sneezes the most petite sneeze Rorschach has ever heard.

“Cat?” he asks, incredulous.

Ozymandias squats down to fuss the cat. It is black and white and looks like it would like an explanation. “Yes. Abandoned. There’s another two in here. I heard them while I was eavesdropping – incognito, of course – in the sauna.” He looks up. “You don’t like cats?” He makes it sound like a character flaw.

Rorschach hasn’t decided what Rorschach feels about cats, but as it happens, Walter likes them very much. He thinks they are elegant and clever, and they eat the mice that have plagued every building he’s lived in. If Humphrey Bogart were an animal, he believes he would be a cat – compact, delicately lethal. Unlike dogs, which are noisy and throw themselves at humans with total insane abandon, in joy and threat alike, cats are very good at understanding personal space. Walter repays this by respecting their personal space, and he feels quite put out when Ozymandias lifts the black and white cat to his chest and cuddles it like a baby. It’s not fair, he wants to say, how would you like it if some gigantic monkey in a mask and breastplate picked you off your feet while you were minding your own business?

“No opinion,” Rorschach says. “Sauna?”

Ozymandias jerks his chin. “Below us. Frequented by a couple of the fixers who trafficked those boys. I’m sure you’ve heard about the case –”

Rorschach seizes his chance. “Homosexuals?”

Ozymandias puts the black and white cat down and reaches into the box for another one. This one is black and only has one eye, which is large and green. It squeaks indignantly and Walter feels a pang. “I’m sure I don’t need to ask your opinion of ‘homosexuals’, as you say,” he murmurs.

“Same as cats. No opinion. Don’t like criminals.”

Ozymandias looks at him thoughtfully, petting the black cat, who seems markedly less keen on the attention than its two-tone brother. He visibly deliberates, which Rorschach knows is being done for his benefit and which annoys him. He doesn’t know what game Ozymandias is playing when he makes a show of deciding what information to hand over or withhold. It makes Rorschach suspicious.

Finally he says, “It’s run by the mob. The Swordfish gang, in this case. Not because the people running it are inherently criminal, but because Swordfish have worked out that you can extort as much money as you want from establishments where gay men gather, because no one will help them if they ask for protection. Not the police, not anybody, Rorschach. Sometimes the Swordfish heavies are _homosexuals_ themselves, and sometimes they use male prostitutes, and sometimes they come here to unwind.”

“The rent boys?” Rorschach doesn’t like the way Ozymandias says his name. It feels as if he’s being told off, but he can’t understand why.

“Or inverted comma masseuses inverted comma, as they might be sold here. Yes. Teenagers, most of them.”

“They massage each other?” Rorschach asks, intrigued. That doesn’t sound so bad. He couldn’t be harming Daniel if that’s all his body is asking for, can he?

Ozymandias gives him a look which the mask makes hard to decipher. “No. Or, well, I’m sure they could ask for that, but I imagine they only use the massage oil as lubrication.”

“Lubrication,” Rorschach echoes. The one-eyed cat growls and Ozymandias gently places it down.

“Penetration of the anus tends to be difficult and even harmful otherwise. Oh, I’m sorry, did I shock you?”

Rorschach has taken a step away from the weird little scene beneath the rainwater tank. For a man who is deliberate about every single one of his movements, he may as well have run screaming in horror.

“Disgusting,” he rasps, but something tremulous enters his voice as he says it, pitching the word oddly.

Ozymandias smiles again, rather coldly. “Are you telling me, or are you asking me?”

They watch one another for a few seconds, just like cats do when they cross one another’s territories. Ozymandias makes a noise that could be a sigh and could be a scoff, and extracts the last creature from the box. It’s a skinny tabby. It fixes Rorschach with an intelligent expression.

“You wanted to ask me about the cantharidin case?” Ozymandias says. He suddenly sounds very tired. Rorschach moves forward, replaces his backward step. The chess board is reset.

“Distributors,” he says. “Names.”

Ozymandias gently lifts the one-eyed cat, who is trying to sneak away, back into the box. Rorschach imagines the creature would bolt, if it could, but they all look skinny and malnourished – they probably don’t have the energy. “The factory was legitimate, but the Spanish fly wasn’t. Extortion again. Bastian Clowes and Oisín O’Shaughnessy were both running that.”

Two of Big Figure’s under-lieutenants. Rorschach latches on to this information like a lifeline. “You brought O’Shaughnessy in,” Rorschach says, rifling through his mental encylopedia of recent arrests.

“Yes. Only five years for the drugs, but fifteen for the racket. Big Figure didn’t pay bail. O’Shaughnessy talked once he realised daddy wasn’t coming to get him. Claimed the profits were going to a bigger drugs racket, but didn’t know what.”

If Rorschach carried lightbulbs, he could have lit one by putting it between his teeth. Bigger drug racket. _Goliath_. “Clowes?”

“Dead. Bled to death in the bathroom of a nightclub in the Village about a month ago.”

“Hurm. Big Figure covering tracks?”

“Maybe. He’d had his testicles cut off. A bit below the belt for Big Figure, but anything’s possible.”

Rorschach gazes at him impassively. That was the good thing about the mask. It gives away nothing. Not even a wink.

“Useful. Won’t keep you from your new friends. Good evening.”

Rorschach moves to go, and Ozymandias says, suddenly, “Wait.” So Rorschach waits, not a thread out of place. He simply stills himself on the spot, a figure paused.

Ozymandias stares down into the face of the clever-looking tabby. He sighs – a real, deep sigh. “Rorschach. The Swordfish gang are bad. Human trafficking is bad. But evil isn’t contained in an act. It’s contained in a person. A series of choices are made when humans choose to prostitute other humans for profit, against the will of the human prostituted. But it’s the choices that are evil, not the act. It’s the choices made by corrupt men, and the lack of choices they offer poor boys, the lack of options. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Rorschach waits.

“It doesn’t have to be bad,” Ozymandias says, cryptically.

Rorschach turns on his heel. Behind him, one of the cats cautiously begins to purr.


	15. Fire!

It’s quite anticlimactic, how easily they get eventually into Goliath’s HQ. Archie has been airborne for months now, but the idea is so fantastical – that Nite Owl II can literally _fly_ – that no one has cottoned on to the idea of air defences or secured rooftops. Purportedly, in twenty years, every family will have a flying car, thanks to Dr. Manhattan’s miraculous advances in clean fuel, but twenty years might as well be another country. In 1960s New York, people stay on the ground and are grateful for it.

Rorschach is quiet. He’s always quiet, so Nite Owl doesn’t notice anything wrong and chats cheerfully, if whisperedly, away, about interesting facts he has learned about the cognition of corvids. (“They’re so smart! They can remember individual human faces and behavioural scientists think they might be capable of quite complex emotions, like empathy. They’re way smarter than owls. Owls are actually kind of dumb.” Rorschach restrains himself.) But tonight Rorschach is quiet because there’s a lot on his mind.

He has been worrying for days about his conversation with Ozymandias. He has mulled over the aspect of _penetration_ like it’s a particularly difficult cryptic crossword puzzle. Oh, it revolts him. That goes without saying. The piercing of the flesh –

_ooh baby you’re hurting me!_

\- is necessarily a vile image. He is sickened by the body’s cravings, by its abject desire to play at being a whore – because of course his body is a whore and it must want the rending, the penetration. He carries a sickness in him.

_Whoreson._

The problem was, as soon as he is in front of Nite Owl, the whole thing collapses. He thinks, with visceral horror, about the writhing, doughy melding of flesh, and then he looks at Nite Owl and he thinks, _hi Daniel_. Trying to superimpose the strong, beautiful, clean figure of Nite Owl over the shape of his putrefying disgust is impossible. It’s like the thoughts are charged with conflicting magnetisms.

He has experimented, alone in bed, eyes squeezed shut, with one, then two, then three spit-lick fingers, and has noted the pain with grim satisfaction. He sees the violence inherent in the action. Corrupt. _Whoreson._ But then he thinks about Daniel. _Hi Daniel_. And the pain streams away so suddenly, replaced with a kind of euphoric unfolding, that he has panicked every time and stopped.

He feels bad about it in another way, which he struggles to annotate. In the living company of Nite Owl, he is struck afresh with the fullness of the man. He’s not just a fantasy object. He’s a living, breathing boy. He has thoughts about corvids and crime. He’s a whole person, good-humoured and a little shy, who would rather take a pistol whip that say the word ‘faggot’, much less be part of a morbid internal monologue where all manner of slurs dance their ghoulish dance. If he could see inside Rorschach’s brain, he would probably punch Rorschach’s lights out. Actually, knowing Daniel, he’d probably try to lower his brain into a warm bath and wash the rot off, mumbling ‘there there’ in an embarrassed way.

Anyway. Rorschach is trying to keep a foot or so between their bodies tonight.

With Ozymandias’s information, alongside what they’ve already gleaned, they have an approximate idea of what they’re looking for, right down to the office to break into. Within quarter of an hour of entering the building, they’ve found research files that indicate the drug once known as Excalibur is now being synthesised as Caliburnus. They grab a fist of files that list customers of the new drug and their relevant sales representatives, and another, slimmer file that says ‘Operation Lethe’. (“I wish they’d stop playing Pin The Tail On The Mythology with their naming system,” mutters Nite Owl.)

Half an hour in the building and they’ve found a hidden drawer in an oak cabinet, with a document holder rather baldly stamped with OPIUM TRADE LINE, as well as another, locked, box file with a very official-looking US Government stamp on it. They opt to leave box file and take the document holder.

They leave the way they came, soundlessly returning to Archie. Rorschach has spent the whole operation wondering whether kissing would come under ‘abject, vile, whorish’ or whether it’s a separate urge that has to be categorised differently, and if so, could he get away with thinking about kissing some more.

They rise into the sky like a bubble speeding to the surface of a glass. Rorschach moves from the co-pilot chair to the lid of Archie’s eye, gazing down at New York with his shoulder and forehead pressed against the glass. As they ease out over the Lower East Side, he sees mushrooms of neon colour.

“Fireworks,” he says.

“Pretty,” says Nite Owl.

“Pretty illegal. Banned for a reason. Fire hazard.”

Archie dips slightly. “Speak of the devil,” Nite Owl murmurs. A few blocks away, billowing smoke and the cartoon lick of fire. A tenement building aflame. “I’ll take us down. Let’s do some straightforward heroism.”

Closer to the building, Rorschach can see it’s the top two floors that are ablaze, and that the fire escape doesn’t go past the second floor. The tenement’s outside walls are scabbed and peeling. It smells like melting plastic. Illuminated by the fire, matchstick silhouettes coalesce into people, hanging out the windows, arms waving. Some have made it onto the roof and are jumping up and down to attract their attention.

“If I get close enough, we can get them on to the ship –” Nite Owl begins.

“No. Sensitive material aboard,” Rorschach interrupts.

“You know something _I’m_ pretty sensitive about? Not letting people get barbecued. I can let out the ramp –”

“Drag net?” Rorschach asks, thinking fast.

“What? The weighted net? I mean, yeah, I can fire it, and then they’ll all get stuck under it and wind up chargrilled.” Nite Owl has turned on the water cannons that Rorschach didn’t realise Archie had, and is spraying the blaze through an open window. “You can get in the back and think about how to play fisherman with the projectiles if you want, I’m going to bring Archie down –”

“Wide enough between buildings?” Rorschach says, raising his voice. Rorschach keeps his voice pitched artificially low; he croaks with the effort of volume. They are just above the burning building.

“You want me to shoot the weighted net so it makes a bridge between the roofs,” Nite Owl says. His voice is asking a question, but Rorschach can see his engineer’s brain is already calculating how he’s going to do it. Time is slow even as the seconds are fast. Two drip by lazy like syrup as Nite Owl positions Archie and fires the net. It spans the gap between the flaming building and its neighbour, twinkling in the light of the flames.

The weighted net is packed in Archie’s rear end; it’s made of a fine, strong reinforced weave of steel alloy from a Dr. Manhattan lab, and the weights act more like grappling hooks. It’s designed to be fired at pursuing craft. Three light aircraft – sparrows to Archie’s owl – can be tied up in a net sack like groceries. Theoretically. Nite Owl has mentioned before that he got the idea from a pirate comic with a submarine craft and killer squid, that it might very well be stupid, and that he suspects he ought to replace it with a smog creator, so Archie can hide in a cloud of owly farts on clear nights. As a makeshift escape route, though, it’s a skein of heaven.

“You get onto the roof and help people across,” Nite Owl says, opening the door. The tenement roof is a storey drop – a stroll, as far as Rorschach is concerned. “I’ll take the rope ladders,” unhooking these, the same material as the net, and sturdy, “and bring the people in the lower storey up.”

“Why must I do roof. Hate playing Boy Scout,” Rorschach mutters, and drops.

Behind him, above him, Nite Owl yells, “You don’t get your burning-buildings badge until you make a flame retardant suuuuuit!”

In the hellish heat, licked by danger, each a little more flammable than he wants to admit, Bird and Blot get to work with saving the day. As with any fight against the odds, Rorschach’s mind goes blissfully blank. Pure adrenalin heightens his senses without blunting his reason. He half pushes, half carries the rooftop crowd across the net – they are almost as terrified of the drop as of the flames beneath them, but he gets them across. The building next door has a more-or-less functioning fire escape. He watches them trickle down, hustles the next batch arriving from Nite Owl’s rescue across the gap. In the distance – much too distant for his liking – is the Doppler hiccup of the fire truck.

(In twenty years from now, another blaze, another rescue. One man carries out a plan he suggested two decades before; the other sits straight-backed on a prison bunk. Twenty years and a couple more hours, and two men lie in the back room of a submerged Archie’s stomach, seizing what little sleep they can while the fish mouth at the windows outside. Dozing off, one tells the other about the fire – similar, different. One doesn’t say, _I remembered the two of us then, and the memory was alive in me_. The other doesn’t say, _Think of it often. Alive in me always._ )

Almost lost in the thunder of the fire, a thin high cry.

Nite Owl heaves himself over the lip of the roof. There’s a little old man over his shoulder, one slipper off. Both of them are literally smoking. “I think that’s everyone,” Nite Owl yells across the roof, but Rorschach hears the cry again.

“Child still in there,” he says.

“What?” Nite Owl shouts, but Rorschach is already running past him, to the rope ladder.

The cry is coming from an apartment building, audible only because all the windows are open in the stifling July heat. Rorschach listens, calculates, swings, kicks the glass in.

Once again in the mouth of danger. His thoughts flatten and zip. He is in a bathroom. The cry is coming from a bedroom. The latex clings to his mouth. It’s providing a rudimentary filter against the smoke, and not for the first time, Rorschach wonders what it’s made of, exactly.

When he gets to the door of the bedroom, where the cries are high and constant he sees

a chair wedged under handle

deliberate

handle rattling

desperate child trying to escape

crying for help

desperate child

locked in

desperate

and he doesn’t remember much else

_it’s okay it’s okay don’t worry I’m going to help you just put your yes it’s okay your arms around okay and we’re off just keep you’re arms around my neck it’s okay it’s okay we’re going we’re going now you don’t have to stay here shut your eyes okay sshhh sshhhh shut your eyes it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay not going to leave you here never would have left you here_

he doesn’t remember much else at all

.

.

.

He comes to on the ground. He’s lying on his side. His hip hurts, badly, like something has pulled. His arms are full; something is crushed tight against his chest. He tucks his chin to look down, and a pair of large, frightened brown eyes stare up at him.

“Easy, buddy,” says a familiar voice, just behind him. A pair of strong hands wrap around his upper arm, tugs hard. “You’re okay to let him go now. He needs some air. Just let him go, bud, you’re both okay. He needs to breathe. Rorschach? Rorschach, I need you to let –”

Rorschach’s grip suddenly loosens and the little boy he has been clutching to his chest tumbles out. The boy gasps for breath and Rorschach scrambles to sit upright, panicked. “Help him!”

“Here comes the ambulance,” Nite Owl says, soothing. He has his hands on Rorschach’s shoulders, keeping him sat on the ground. He says, quieter, “Oh fuck me, and the ghouls too.” There’s a news truck pulling up dangerously close to the bumpers of the ambulance truck.

The little boy coughs in an urgent, frightening way and grabs for Rorschach’s hand. Rorschach takes it. He squeezes and squeezes until a paramedic descends on the kid and presses an oxygen mask over his face. He lets go so the boy can be put into a stretcher. It’s an effort to loosen his grip. His hands are shaking.

Nite Owl’s has flung one arm around him and is trying to pull him upright. Strangely, his proximity does not engender desire or fear or even comfort. It doesn’t feel like anything at all. It doesn’t even feel farcical, which it ought to, when Nite Owl drops his hat – which he hadn’t realised he’d lost – back on his head.

“He’d been locked in,” says Walter, in Walter’s voice. “He thought he was going to die in there.” His right hip twinges.

“Can you stand?” Nite Owl whispers, mouth against the mask. They are slumped against each other, two falling pillars.

“He’d been locked in,” Walter repeats.

“He’s safe now. You did great. I’m going to prop you up, okay. Put your weight on me.”

A pop and flash: a journalist has taken their picture. The night is suddenly swarming with professional bystanders. Where were they, Walter wonders, when the boy was crying for help?

“Locked in deliberately,” he says, because he can’t get over it. Another pop and flash. He can hear people shouting, “Rorschach! Nite Owl! Hey, heroes! Look over here please! Over here! Hey, over here! Any comment? Hey, hey, heroes!”

“Nite Owl –”

“Sshhh. I hear you, Jersey.” Nite Owl is leading him out of the crowd, one arm around him, batting a TV journalist’s microphone aside. “Just don’t let anyone else.”

Things blur, smudge. Nite Owl pulls him onwards, toggling Archie down on the remote with his spare thumb. Some people want to shake their hands; the journalists want more photos and soundbites, which is exhausting. More humanly, some of the rescued citizens are cussing every which way, complaining that they’d left valuable things in their apartments, that they ain’t want no damn foil blanket get that offa me, where’s the fire truck, hey boyo where’s my other slipper, jesus christ is that god damn bird ship just a big fucking lounge did he not think to pack a god damn water hose –

One thousand years later – or so it feels – they are on the ship. Nite Owl hits the autopilot.

“Sit down in the chair,” he instructs. “I had catch you with the lasso and it’s probably torn something in your leg. You’re lucky I’ve got the reactions of a stressed out snake or you’d be a Rorschach blot on the pavement and I’d have to spend my inheritance on therapy.”

Rorschach sits.

After a couple of seconds he says, “What?”

“Thought so,” mutters Nite Owl. Then, to him, “I saw you dive in through a window and the dive out thirty seconds later with that kid in your arms. It was just as well I came down after you and had the rope ready. I was going to use it to get us both down to the ground, in, you know, a more orderly, less gravity-induced style. I don’t know what you were thinking – I doubt you were thinking at all – but it looks like you were going to use your own body as a cushion for impact and let the kid land on top. I lassoed you by the thigh on the way down. The thigh! It’s a lot harder than the ankle. I’m proud of myself, for the record, because that was a neat trick I pulled off, but I’m also pretty traumatised and upset by the whole partner-attempts-suicide situation which is why I can’t stop talking. Say something.”

Rorschach sits and stares out through the window. His neck feels raw. He can’t tell if it’s sweat stinging his sunburn, or injuries from the fire. It’s the only thing he can focus on – he doesn’t want to think about the rattling handle, the missing minutes of his memory. “Neck burnt?” he asks, taking off the hat.

Nite Owl steps behind him. A leathery shuffle of gloves being pulled off, then eight hot points of electricity where Nite Owl touches the skin at the back of his neck with the tips of his fingers, just under the edge of Rorschach’s mask.

“You’re okay, I think,” murmurs Nite Owl, and the fingers make soft, breath-light sweeps down his neck. Rorschach’s body tenses; he feels all of his nerves turn up, stream into his throat, like a sunflowers trying to follow the sun. The body is alive to something his mind is still too shattered to follow. Traitor, he thinks bitterly.

Nite Owl’s fingers travel lower. They flatten the trio of collars – jacket, suit, shirt – and tug down. They spread, holding the material in place. Exposure. Rorschach is being peeled. Nite Owl’s breath warms his neck.

“Probably not manual labour,” Rorschach says. Nite Owl freezes.

“What’s that?” he says, and his voice is so close that Rorschach abruptly visualises Nite Owl’s mouth lush and sweet against his jaw. He forces himself to remember the maniacal heat of the fire.

“Freckles stop at collar. You’re thinking, probably not manual labour. Indoor job.”

Nite Owl laughs, or makes a sort of laughing noise as his breath gusts against Rorschach’s neck again. “You’re right. You’re alabaster under here, Peter.”

The name game should place some joking distance between them, but the observation closes it again. Nite Owl releases his collar and rests his hands on Rorschach’s shoulders. They both stare into Archie’s eye. The reflection is not clear enough to show whether they are staring at one another.

“What else?” Rorschach prompts.

“About you?”

“Mm.”

Nite Owl drums his fingers on Rorschach’s shoulders. “You’re left-handed. Around 5’8” and 150 lbs. You’re from New Jersey. You have some formal training as a boxer. Maybe you were on your college athletics or gymnastics team. You know how to take a fall, for sure. I’m about 70% sure you live somewhere in Manhattan. Mid-late twenties, no older than thirty. Republican. Haven’t had much, if any, dental work done. Very slight underbite. You’re well read. You’re, uh, you’re not much of a ladies’ man, or at least not the ladies we meet. Your clothes are custom-made, possibly made by you. Incredible lock-picker. Good with your hands. In a trade, maybe. You’re a redhead.” A strange, swooping sensation in Rorschach’s chest, that makes him feel as if his heart is levitating. “Judging by the – judging by what I’ve seen, orange-red or ginger-blond. Doubt you’re auburn.”

Rorschach is impressed (both with Nite Owl and with himself for coming off as college-educated). He wants to do something generous, as a sort of reward, but he doesn’t have much worth giving. He thinks. He lifts his still gloved hands and reaches for the back of his head. Nite Owl’s fingers twitch – to pull away? – but he ignores them and grasps the edge of the mask, pulls until he’s revealed the back of his head, exposed as if for a blow.

He lets Nite Owl take it in.

“Pure copper,” Nite Owl murmurs.

His hands leave Rorschach’s shoulders and Rorschach feels them cover his own. Gentle pressure, unbearable in its gentleness. Nite Owl guides the mask back down over his head. His fingers drop into place on the back of Rorschach’s neck. “Thank you,” he says, even quieter, so that Rorschach isn’t sure he hears it right.

They’re back in the same position – eight points of electricity on his neck, facing forwards, New York scrolling away below them. Rorschach has a sense of being rewound, as if a glitch in time has offered him the opportunity to play the scene again, see how far he can push it.

He catches the thought. Guilt assails him, immediate and acrid. He wants Nite Owl to see him as Rorschach but he keeps showing him pieces of Walter in a hideous striptease. Of course Nite Owl lingers; he’s like a man slowing down while going past a traffic accident. Rorschach feels like a whore. _Whoreson_. He shudders. Nite Owl, mistaking it for the aftermath of adrenalin, squeezes.

“Do you want to talk about the boy?” he asks, kindly. It’s exactly the wrong question for this train of thought.

“ _No_ ,” Rorschach snarls, and Nite Owl snatches his hands back like he’s been slapped. “Don’t want to dwell. Probably locked in by whore mother so as not to disturb customers.”

_I should’ve had that abortion like everyone told me to –_

_If I hear a fucking peep out of this room –_

_Gonna make sure you don’t bother me with a john again –_

“That is an awfully specific reason for a set-up you saw for seconds, on fire,” Nite Owl says drily. He is moving towards the back room of Archie, where the documents have been stashed, and with every step the strange, trembling connection between them frays, splits and eventually drops. Rorschach feels relief, as if an arrow has been pulled out of his sternum. He focuses on his hip. Pain. Receive it. Put it aside.

_Working to put food in your brat mouth and all you do is cry –_

“Good mask is observant even under pressure,” he says, bland.

“Uh huh.” Nite Owl comes out with the folders and drops into the pilot seat. He checks a monitor, fiddling ostentatiously with the display. Then he clears his throat loudly and starts to flick through the papers.

“Penny for them,” Rorschach says witheringly.

“My rates are much higher,” Nite Owl says. “Dollar at least per daydream, more for conscious thought.”

“Cough it up and I’ll await your invoice in the post.”

Nite Owl sighs deeply, flicks through the papers again. It’s clear he’s not reading them at all. “I don’t think this is the time,” he says finally.

“Don’t like evasion. Suggests guilt.”

If Rorschach was a jumpy sort of person, he would flinch when Daniel spins round suddenly in the chair. But he’s Rorschach. He doesn’t even take a sharp breath in.

“Why do you keep saying ‘whore’?” Nite Owl bursts out. “I _know_ you’ve noticed that I don’t.”

“Descriptor.”

“Not the way you say it. And you could say, oh, I don’t know. Working girl. Trick. Pro. Prostituted woman, that’s an Ozymandias classic. Instead you say ‘whore’ like you really mean it, as if we don’t devote _quite a large part of the job_ trying to help women shoved into bad situations by the vice kings.”

“Not helping _them._ Stopping crime,” Rorschach protests, and is embarrassed by the whine in his voice.

“Listen,” Nite Owl continues, ignoring him, “I really like working with you, Rorschach, for all that you’re kind of weird and you won’t tell me anything about yourself and you have some kind of death wish – ”

“Do not,” Rorschach says childishly.

“ – diving out windows and going up against armed men in a dress shirt and no weapons, don’t think I haven’t noticed. And I trust you. God knows why I do. I’d trust you with my life even though I’ve never seen your face. But sometimes, I’m not sure I like _you_.”

He spins back round to stare at the papers in his lap. His cheeks are turning red. Any repartee dies fast and cold in Rorschach’s throat. The autopilot winks merrily at them, totally unable to read the room.

Walter finds his eyes prickling, stupidly, with tears. His brain is glassy and his heart rate is going at the same steady rate, but his face didn’t get the memo about abject calm. He doesn’t _feel_ tearful, but his face is _being_ tearful, which is just another irritating example of the body running to its own lousy script.

_– all you do is cry –_

“You don’t understand,” Walter says, and the misery in his voice makes Rorschach want to cut his tongue out.

Nite Owl gives him a quick, shy smile with guilt plastered all over it. “No, Jersey, I don’t think I do.”

“Stop calling me Jersey.”

“Sorry, Phil.”

“Don’t call me Phil either.”

“Ha, okay.” Nite Owl chews his lower lip. “Look, um, Rorschach. I’m sorry. Obviously there is… obviously your business is your business. I just. Wish there was something. I could do.”

“You do enough,” Walter mumbles, and Nite Owl’s cheeks turn deeper red.

They sit in silence for a little longer, then Daniel says, in a very small voice, “I didn’t mean it. I do like you.”

“I like you too,” says Walter in an even smaller voice.

The silence extends the length of the owlship. The autopilot blinks cheerily on, oblivious of the change in atmosphere.

“Um, would it make any difference if I tried talking to you about the whole ‘whore’ thing?”

“No,” Rorschach says wearily. “Not something up for discussion.”

“I don’t know if you’ve had, uh, a bad romantic experience or something –”

“No.” Not sharp, as he intended, just tired. “Nothing like that. Don’t like… bodies. Vectors of harm. Drop it now. Please.”

Nite Owl is giving him a curious look. “That’s… a bit more advanced that I was expecting. What about your friend the doctor?”

Rorschach opens his mouth to say, _not my friend_ , but Nite Owl has glanced down and visibly starts.

“What?” Rorschach asks.

“Aw, hell. I was just about to use your homicidal medical pal as an example, but she’s just messed it up.” He hands Rorschach the piece of paper from the folder. It is a list of ‘second phase’ recipients of Caliburnus, ‘formally Excalibur’. Halfway down the list, a familiar address from the Village is listed on it. And there, in neat black type, _Dr. S. Chea._


	16. A Visit to the Doctor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CN: child abuse

In the seeping, silvered light of pre-dawn, Rorschach is limping across the rooftops. His hip is hot with fresh pain. It’s good. Not pleasant, but useful. It is keeping his mind just awake enough to the present moment.

Walter views the present moment as if from the perspective of the bottom of a well: it is a small circle of light, clear and coherent, that he must keep his gaze trained on. In the well, all around him, lapping black water meets walls of black stone, an all-encompassing darkness filled with turgid horrors. He is surrounded by his past: silent and pitch-dark and threatening to submerge him.

He is twenty-five years old. He has only three years to draw on as Rorschach, mere months as The Partnership. When the barricades in his brain are breached, what seeps through are black years he has tried so hard to forget. He forces himself to think about the pain in his hip, his gait, the route to the edge of Harlem.

This is how Walter experiences the journey:

He rounds a chimney stack and limps to the edge of the roof –

_– when he sees Dr Chea’s name on the list he feels as if the air pressure has dropped, but nothing else – no shock, no anger, no, God forbid, hurt. Nite Owl literally holds his breath, but all he says is, “Ennk.”_

_They fly back to the Nest, settle in. Daniel goes upstairs, promising root beer floats, and Rorschach says, “Hero’s delight.” Daniel laughs. He returns with the delights, topless against the July heat. Even Rorschach is down to shirtsleeves._

_Paperwork, paperwork. Goliath are planning to buy opiates from Big Figure’s supply line, of course. Facsimiles in the OPIUM TRADE LINE folder show carefully doctored documents presenting the supply as legal. They could pin Big Figure with illegal distribution, or with fraud, or both. It’s almost too easy._

_More curious, though, is the manufacture of Caliburnus, unofficially synthesised at the factory from Ozymandias’s cantharidin case. They look through the Caliburnus recipient documents. Dr Chea’s name bobs up again._

_“It’s amazing, what goes on behind closed doors,” murmurs Daniel._

_And suddenly, for Rorschach, everything looks like static._

_He comes to and his root beer float is smashed on the floor, and he is on the floor, and his cheek is pressed to the floor, and Daniel is kneeling above him and saying, “What the **fuck** , dude?” and he can’t remember – _

– and continues his climb down the fire escape. He pauses, glances up at the roof. He has lost maybe three seconds of the present. That’s fine. He still remembers what he’s doing here. The gap between buildings is too large, and he needs to take a couple of back streets. There’s an alley just to the left –

_– he is shoving at the door with all his might, and the plywood is rattling in its chipped frame, but he’s small even for a six-year-old and he knows from experience that the door won’t budge. He needs the toilet so bad._

_He’s been locked in for three hours. Periodically, the shriek of bedsprings and a groaning ululation let him know he’s not alone, but no one has come to check on him. He has a used colouring book and a single black crayon. He has drawn strange patterns over every page, obliterating the smiling cartoon dogs and children below._

_He shoves again and it’s the shove that does it. Wet heat fills the front of his shorts, drips in a warm seam down his leg. He starts to cry, because he knows what happens to fucking brats who make a mess –_

– he shoves the drunk to one side, and the man, curled over like a comma, belches musically. He looks up at Rorschach’s mask on his stumble sideways then shrinks in on himself with wet-eye terror. Rorshach ignores him. Where is he? Why has he left the alleys?

He glances up at a street sign and frowns underneath the mask. He has lost several minutes, maybe as many as five. He doesn’t need to double back, thankfully, but he needs to get back into the shadows, away from the main streets, and back to the roofs as soon as possible. Dawn is heaving itself over the skyline and he knows he shouldn’t be out when the light comes, but he needs to get to Dr. Chea’s and make her explain –

_– “Night guards’ station was just here,” Rorschach explains, sketching it on the paper with the thick black pen the doctor has provided. “Three middle-aged men, two on patrol. Hippies knocked them out and dragged them back. Could see from boot-black drag marks along here,” another line on the map, “they’d gone to chemical treatment section, not primary reservoirs as suspected.”_

_“Where are primary reservoirs?” Dr Chea asks, leaning over. Her face is placid, like something recently plastered, but her pupils are glittering pinpoints._

_Rorschach adds some explanatory boxes to the map and circles the section for her benefit. The water treatment centre’s layout is strangely symmetrical, like the body of a beetle. He sits back in his chair to admire his handiwork and eats another sweet. His mask is pulled up to reveal his mouth. Dr Chea never seems to look directly at his face, and when she talks to him she appears to address someone standing behind him, as if his skull is transparent._

_“Wow,” says Dr Chea, which she pronounces ‘vow’. She gives him a smile – not one of the mild and dead realignments of her lips, but a real smile, showing her teeth and even reaching her eyes. She picks up the map and admires it. There is something like pride on her face, as if she is admiring his report card, as if she is his –_

– from this part of the alley he can see another easy route to the roofs, and then an almost-clear path. It’s the same route he took when he bumped in to Ozymandias all those months ago. He sees the plan ahead with satisfaction. Mere seconds lost, he thinks, with something like pride. Nothing to worry about. He braces a foot against the wall. He has everything under control –

_– “You’re out of control,” Daniel hisses. He has Rorschach in a hold – judo, Rorschach suspects, formally taught, which might explain his strangely intimate fighting style. Rorschach is a boxer; he likes his opponents at arm’s length._

_His cheekbone grinds on the concrete floor as Daniel bears down. “If you think I’m letting you go anywhere in this state,” Daniel continues, and then shouts with pain as Rorschach slams his head backwards into Daniel’s nose. It hurts his neck, but Daniel lets him go. He kicks out but Daniel is already out of range._

_“Don’t need your permission,” Rorschach says. He stands up. The injured leg collapses under him. He catches himself before the fall, but it’s sloppy, and he knows it. He’s losing time, losing his grasp on the night, moment by moment. “Don’t need your help, either. Can deal with her alone.”_

_Daniel touches his nostrils and looks at his fingers. Blood. His glasses are grimed with sweat and one of the metal arms is bent out of shape. He smears the blood between the pads of his forefinger and thumb, staring down as if he’s never seen the colour red before._

_“Alley cat,” he says. There’s a tickle in the cadence, like he’s trying not to laugh or cry._

_Rorschach ignores him. He begins to leave the way he likes to: in silence, with a scene stopped dead behind him._

_He hears Daniel, soft as rain on leaves, murmur, “Red in tooth and claw as well, huh,” and for a desperate moment he wants to be thrown to the floor again, held down, have a body in control of his body, a body over his body, a body caring for his body –_

– light like orange highlighter is trickling through the gaps between buildings. From the roofs he can see the cogs and wheels of New York are starting to wake up – garbage men, subway guards, kiosk workers. Most of the city won’t stir for a few hours yet, but Rorschach is pushing his luck. He’s out too early to be safe, and Walter has been up too late to think clearly.

Besides, he keeps losing time. Not sensible several storeys up.

(No one has ever told Walter that losing time, or regaining memory in broken, non-linear pieces, is a trauma reaction. No one has ever explained to him how a trigger works, what a gross stress reaction – as it is known in 1965 – looks like. He was a quiet boy, small and unassuming. He never made a fuss and no one looked twice. Most people didn’t even look once. No one helped.

Story of a life. _No one helped._ )

Rorschach forces himself to slow down. He is not far from Dr Chea’s apartment. He doesn’t know if she will be awake or asleep, or even if she’ll be home. He has never called on her at this hour.

His injury has unbalanced him too much to take a leap between rooftops. He forces himself downwards, clambering between windowsills and drainpipes. In the proto-daylight he can see the streaks of grime on the arm of his trench, the oily stains and patches on his gloves. He can smell the smoke of the fire on him, the slaughterhouse stink of his own sweat.

He steps with exaggerated care onto the ground –

_– and tiptoes along the corridor. He can hear crying, the whole body kind. Someone is crying hard enough to choke. The noise tears through the apartment like an alarm._

_He’s tired, right in his bones. Tiredness clamps his head. He stayed up late doing math homework. He always does the homework; the other kids can make fun of his dirty, holey clothes, his tongue-tied shyness, his smell, but they can’t call him a retard if he gets good grades. Swot’s okay. But he had to make his own dinner first, then wipe the whole kitchen afterwards so it was clear he hadn’t made a mess. He doesn’t want to make a mess. He mustn’t, ever, make a mess._

_Dinner was cheese he had to scrape a froth of mould off, some crackers, some cold beans. He’s not allowed to use the stove. I’m ten, he said once, I know how. I won’t burn down nothing, I promise. Turns out the reason he’s not allowed to use it is that gas costs money._

_Money I earn you runt bastard._

_That money’s mine you fucking mongrel._

_You waste a cent I’ll take it out of your skin._

_Well, anyway, he’s getting to like the taste of cold beans. Maybe he prefers it. Beans don’t need heating up anyway._

_He pokes his head round the bedroom door. She’s sitting on the bed in a white nightdress made of a sort of slippery material. This room has a smell he hates, kind of like rotting flowers. He associates it with the men. They must make a mess and leave this stink, and she can’t ever clean it out. No wonder she gets upset._

_She’s sobbing so hard her shoulders are shaking. He shuffles in._

_“Don’t cry,” he offers, but quiet, so he can deny he said anything if it makes her angry. She turns around. Her face is puffy and streaked with black. She’s cried off her mascara._

_“Walter, baby,” she says, and her face is soft and smashed, like a blown rose. She holds out her arms._

_He trots forward, feeling as if the clamp has come off his head. Everything’s okay. He can help. Right the wrongs. Fix it ‘til there are no more tears. No more cold beans. Besides, every scared little kid wants a hug from his –_

_Even when the thing that scares you is your –_

_You still want to be protected by your –_

_“Aw honey,” she says, into his hair. She’s got her arms wrapped tight around him and he wraps his arms tight around her too. She’s soft and doughy. Her hair smells like pansies and vinegar. He’s enveloped by warmth._

_“You’re a good boy,” she says, and his heart sings. He can fix it. He can make everything right._

_“You don’t have to see those men,” he says, muffled, into her shoulder. “I’m ten. I can get a paper round.” He has seen such things in comics, where families have whole buildings to themselves, with green grass out front and cars at the side. In the moment, he believes it’s possible. He can save everything if he gets a suburban paper round in tenement slum in New York._

_He feels the change minutely, because he’s flush with her skin. Muscles tense along her back. Eight bright points of electricity where her nails suddenly dig. He’s up close to the most dangerous thing in the world: her body._

_“What the fuck did you just say.”_

_He starts trying to wriggle free but she’s got him clamped by the arms._

_“Nothing! I didn’t mean to make you mad! I just thought, maybe, I could help out, and you don’t have to see those men, and –”_

_“What did you fucking SAY,” she screams, and cracks him across the face with her hand, knuckles first. He tries to jerk away but she’s twisting a fist in his hair. One hard yank and he’s on the floor, on his knees, no please, please I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, please don’t, I’m sorry, please don’t, please, no no no no_

_please_

_please_

_don’t_

_mommy_

Dr Chea is in her kitchen.

Her face is stupid with sleep, but her hair is brushed and her clothes are pressed. Normally when he visits, she is in her work clothes – neat, collarless pant suits with the barest nod to the current mode – but today she is dressed strangely: a tubular, ankle-length skirt and a loose white blouse. She looks, for want of a better word, foreign. He is disturbed to imagine that people have considered them friends.

He can’t remember arriving but now he’s at the window where he normally slips in. It’s half open, as always, as if nothing has changed. She is boiling water for coffee in a stove-top kettle. She meets the stare of his mask when she looks up at the window.

She smiles. A real smile. Warm and welcoming.

“Hello,” she says.

Rorschach has his hands around her throat before she can finish the second syllable.

He drives her backwards through the kitchen. She brings something round in her left hand, so slowly he’s caught it and twisted her wrist, hard, made her drop it with a clatter – knife – before he’s even got her slammed against the wall. He pins her there with his right hand, draws his left hand back to re-break her nose, when he feels a prickle near the top of his thigh.

He freezes. Dr Chea’s face turns beetish with blood.

She smiles at him again, with difficulty.

“Alwa’ ha’ two kni’,” she manages.

Rorschach tightens his grip momentarily. He’s being sloppy, he knows. His brain is in pieces. He should have watched both of her hands. But she’s being sloppy too, or lenient. One of his last working brain cells holds up a cardboard sign: _She’s trying not to hurt you_.

He lets her go and Sovanni Chea makes an awful noise like wind being sucked up an alley. The second knife she throws in the sink, where it lands with a metallic bang. He snatches it back out.

“Lied to me,” he says, flatly, turning the knife over. It’s one of her exquisite little daggers.

Dr Chea is massaging her throat with her eyes closed, but at this, she opens one eye and squints at him.

“Ha?” she says.

“Said you’d stopped using Excalibur. Lied. Receiving it under a different name. Contacts at Goliath. Working with Bastian Clowes, until you, hurm, cut him off.” Dr Chea opens her other eye. “Don’t like being lied to. Explanation in ten seconds if you want to keep all ten fingers.”

“I didn’t lie,” Dr Chea replies. “I said, I stop using Excalibur on the girls. I never prescribe it since.”

“But still ordering supplies. Why?”

He sees her hesitate and turn her answer over in her mind. He’s reminded of the first night he busted into the kitchen and ate her mango – the way she considered her answers before she responded. She makes some kind of decision; he can see it assembling on her face.

“Come,” she says, and then walks past him to the kitchen door.

He follows her out of the kitchen for the first time, up a staircase, lined with prints of strange, sinuous dancers with towering headdresses. Something putrid, laced with adrenalin, surges through his maligned body, almost knocks him sideways. She is the demon but she is in the casing of a woman. If she tries to take him into a woman’s bedroom, he will use the dagger to pin her palm to the doorframe.

He sees the bedroom over her shoulder, the neatly made bed like an executioner’s block. The sun is up and sunlight has filled the room, lending doom a vivid colour. He imagines the smell of rotting flowers.

She walks past it and into a far room. He barely has time to recognise his relief before he follows her in.

This room is dominated by a large, scarred table, covered in beakers, test tubes, strange bottles. At the far end, away from the window, is a neat rack of knives and swords. There is a chair and a high stool. She perches herself on the stool, just in front of the table, and gestures towards the chair.

“Sit,” she says.

“No.”

“Okay.” She pauses, thinks again, then waves a hand at the assorted glassware on the table. “Very, uh, amateur. I have not the proper equipment here. Enough for personal research.”

Rorschach waits.

“Excalibur, it make you feel pain. It does something to nerves. In the right dose, numbness first, then pain. Same receptor as opiates, different outcome. Also opposite effect in the brain. Instead of,” she fumbles for the word, frowns, “big… calm… it is more,” she indicates clawing at the air, shrugs.

“Anxious? Paranoid?” Rorschach offers, reeling off just two of the emotions floating around on the top of the scummy water in his head.

Dr Chea wibbles her head. “Yes, but also, no. We can say, a negatif euphoria. Euphorie du mal.”

“French,” he says.

“I am very stress,” she replies, with hurt dignity, “and English is my third language. Do you wish to discuss my language or Excalibur?”

“Still receiving Excalibur, under the name Caliburnus. Why?”  
  


She idly knocks a conical beaker against another, producing a clear, bell-like noise. “Clowes,” she pronounces this ‘clow’, without the s, “sent many girl to me. Not in a good state. I did not like Clowes. I plan to deal with him.” Here she waves towards the rack of blades. “But, I tail him a little, I discover this… usine… they make the pills…”

“Factory,” growls Rorschach. “Focus on speaking a language I understand. Feeling very impatient and very much _holding a knife._ ”

“Do you know what that pills are for?” Dr Chea asks, ungrammatical but intelligibly English.

Rorschach remembers his early conversation with Ozymandias. Cantharidin. Spanish fly. _I’ll leave you to your insects,_ God.

“Yes,” he says, and he can’t keep his disgust from oozing into his voice. Dr Chea looks at him with a spark in her eyes. The demon is there, steady and insane.

“It makes you sick too,” says the demon.

“ _Yes_.”

“Good. So I learn, Big Figure and his, his _men_ , they make this drug. For _those things_. And they make Excalibur in the same factory afterwards, because they already buy off the owner. I decide for a little conversation with Clowes. He talk a lot, at the end. Even after they begin Excalibur, people still buying the old drug from the factory. Shops and bars of the quartiers chauds. And so I think…” she trails off.

“Planned to make a canthridin compound with Excalibur,” says Rorschach. “In your little home laboratory. And punish everyone who uses it for _that_.”

Dr Chea smiles. “You think I am a schoolgirl? I have a biochemistry masters from your John Hopkins,” she says. “I am sure you check.” Rorschach gives her a grudging nod. “Of course I cannot make a perfect synthesis here. But I can experiment enough. If I have the pills. And I am only interested in the ones that go to men.”

Finally, Rorschach lowers himself into a chair. He has a sensation like his brain is slurring. The edges are coming off the room and his scalp feels both weighted and lifting free of his skull. He is so tired. The day is here, like an anti-climax.

“Who hurt you?” he says, meaning it to be withering, but it comes out inquisitive.

Dr Chea snorts. “Who hurt _you_?”

Beneath the mask, Walter winces. The doctor watches the black ink pool.

“I become a demon because of What Happened,” she says. “Before then, I was a woman. Now, I am this. I am not sorry or sad to be a demon. But I don’t like… the things men do with women.”

“No,” says Walter, tiredly. “Neither do I. All sickening. Whores most sickening of all. Bodies where harm lives.”

“Nothing wrong with them,” Dr Chea says mildly. “It’s men. The men make to,” she fumbles again, “comme une épée, they use their bodies to cut, they,” a flicker behind her eyes as the demon stirs, “it’s a violence, always, they,” she stares at him, gives up. “Men have bodies where harm comes.”

“You sound insane.” He yawns.

She props her chin up with her hand and he mirrors her. “The girls who come to me, they do it for money, not this, as you say, harm. In your country and mine, we need money to live.”

“Don’t have to whore to make money.”

Dr Chea gives him one of her washed-out non-looks. “Every man in my clinic earn more than me,” she tells him. “I break in to the files and check. And I have much education, I speak three languages, and my family, by the way, are rich, or I would not be in your You Ett Ay. Do you think the girls have this? Who do you think is helping them?”

_No one helped._ He is growing fuzzy at the edges.

“Tell me What Happened,” he says. “A man. Centre of this story. To make you like this.”

She slips off her stool and comes to stand in front of him. Pain and exhaustion lap over him.

“No,” she says. “A child. And you? Why are you demon?”

“I was a child,” he murmurs. “Why are you dressed like that?”

“Vassa. Holy day. I have to go to temple. See the others. Not many of us in your You Ett Ay. And I know what you think, Mr Mask, but I told you the first time, I am Buddhist. I believe in pain management. Those men cause too much pain to others.”

“Ozymandias is tracking you,” he says. He doesn’t know why. It’s like throwing the responsibility to her. And it’s like giving up the weight of knowing she’ll be gone soon, behind bars once the golden boy has all his pieces. He frees himself of the knowledge, passes it to her.

Through fading vision, he sees the demon twinkle in her eyes.

He gets up and she watches him, mild again. He leaves just as he always leaves – without a word, leaving the other person to pick up the pieces of the played-out scene.

On the roof of the building, he strips off the mask and puts it in his pocket. He takes off the trench, balls his jacket, gloves and hat up in it. He rolls his trousers up. He looks dissolute. He looks like a drunk coming off a rough Saturday night. He even sways like one. No one will give him a second glance. New York doesn’t want trouble this early in the morning.

When he reaches the street and sees Sovanni Chea trotting out of the front door, she doesn’t even glance at him. His body is just a puppet. Rorschach is gone and the bone house he spends his days trapped inside tumbles them home.


	17. The Grappling Gun

It is Sunday, a day which, for Walter, is steeped in melancholy. Sunday comes over and shakes its head: _barely fewer scumbags on the streets than Monday_. Did they teach him, at the Charlton Home, that the dream they call God rests on a Sunday? Is that the reason for this seedy gloom in his heart: God looking the other way when the week calls Walter to account?

He gets in to his apartment at nearly 6am, dragging his leg up the stairs like a dead animal. He falls into bed, sleeps for hours. The sheets are greying and sour; Walter washes them on a monthly basis. He never washes his sole towel. All it does is dry off a cleaned body; what more cleaning does it need?

When he wakes the sun is high, but that’s meaningless in July. It could be 11am, it could be 4pm. He checks the cheap alarm clock that sits on a pile of newspapers and library books by his bed. Nearly lunchtime. He stares at the long scab of wallpaper on the wall opposite, peeling and sepia, imagines the sound of a hundred frightened little fists beating inside the plaster. It’s just his heartbeat, he knows, pounding in his ears, mixing with his dreams about fire and factories and children and knives.

He pulls himself out of Rorschach’s trousers and shirt, then drags the whole costume into the kitchen, drops it in the bath, turns on the tap. He has a spare, but the smell of smoke is stinging his nerves. He considers, then pulls his underwear off too, tosses them in and sits on the edge of the bath. He wishes he could scrape his body off his soul and flush it down the plughole.

His right hip is swelling. There’s murky purple swimming under the skin. It’s a bad pull. Daniel’s fault. Daniel has done this to his body – but in the service of saving it from cracking open on the pavement. Walter tests that thought and finds he likes it, a lot. Daniel took his body in hand, bound it to the rope. He feels as if he has been handled, as hawk is handled by an austringer.

He is surprised by the touch of water on his trailing hand, and hastily turns the tap off. The bathwater is already brackish grey, with an occasional eddy of red. He remembers the blood smearing on Daniel’s fingertips. Dark, smoky, Sunday sadness clouds his vision.

For the rest of the day, Walter chases complicated emotions in and out of the two rooms in his apartment, locking himself in the dank WC when he can’t take the sight of the same eight walls. He should be out on patrol, he knows, either on an early patrol with Nite Owl before he flies back to Cambridge, or out on his own – but he finds he can’t leave the rooms.

_I’m injured,_ he explains to Sam Spade in his head. _If I went out tonight and got stuck with a knife in the guts because I can’t move any faster than a limp, we’ll never bring Big Figure down._

_The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter_ , Sam Spade observes, and even though it’s just recycled script, Walter is ashamed. Yet still he doesn’t leave.

He needs to go to the Nest. He needs to apologise to Daniel. He needs to show Daniel this injury, make him understand what it means. He needs to feel careful fingers testing the bruising, sliding along the hollow of his hip. He needs to hear Daniel say, in that soft and strange voice, _Just as I thought. A redhead all over_.

_Is it good that I’m a redhead?_

_It’s good._

_You like it?_

_I like it._

_Am I good?_

_You’re so good. You’re a good boy._

Walter makes a noise like a man being flayed. He still does not leave the apartment.

When the night finally falls, he feels as if he’s signed his own death warrant, and still he does not leave. He rehearses a scene that will cancel out the headbutt, the nosebleed, imagines leaving by the window and heading to the Nest to play it out. And still, he does not leave.

He lies down and his body puts on a shallow show of sleep.

Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. The costume stays locked in a cheap suitcase under the bed. Walter forces himself into work every day as if he’s holding a gun to his own head, frogmarching himself down the streets. July is sweaty, hot like a fever. With every day that the muscle pull heals, Walter feels as if something else is being torn apart.

On Friday he limps in to the warehouse and sits at his sewing station. He’s working on a custom order, a made-to-measure suit. Opposite him, a man named Toby is calmly putting collars on a large order of shirts.

“Packing boxes went out yesterday,” he says to Walter. “Fetched you a crate. From the veg stall.”

Walter has periodically been resting his injured leg on a pile of packing boxes by their factory table, twisting round to lift it when he’s working on hand-sewing. He is startled by Toby’s gesture; it makes him feel like he’s been tracking bloody footprints. He wasn’t aware that anyone else had noticed he was injured. He mutters, “Thanks,” through a candy-pink blush.

The men at the sewing station work in silence until the 12pm bell, signalling a twenty-minute break. Beside Toby, another man named Joe has produced a newspaper from underneath him – he’s been sitting on it – and is poring over the front page.

“You fellers reckon the landlord did those mask boys in?” he says, to the table at large. They are not a particularly communicative team and most of them ignore him, except Toby, who says,

“What you on about, Joseph?”

Joe flaps the paper. “Those masks saved a bunch of people on Saturday night, down on Lower East. Their homes were on fire. It was all over the Sunday papers. They got a photo of them posing in front of the fire engines, buddied up.”

Walter, massaging out his knotted fingers, stares hard at his knuckles. ‘Posing’ is not how he remembers it.

“Why would the landlord top them, Joseph?” Toby asks wearily.

Joe sniffs. Walter recognises that sniff. He’s heard a certain sort of man produce it a hundred times before. It’s the sound small fry make before they try to be big fish at a group of indifferent guppies. “Insurance. Bet superheroes saving the day ruined his claim. They’ve not been in the paper since.” He waves the paper again. “I check every day. They been gutted by an angry landlord, I’m telling you.”

“Fool talk,” says Toby.

“Nah, it’s pure entertainment. Those schmucks are better’n pirates. They say those two are fags.”

“They put that in the paper of record?” says Walter, before he can stop himself.

All the men – even the ones who have not been part of this conversation, who are just unbending flattened sandwiches or coring apples – turn to stare at him. Walter almost never speaks. Joe looks as if Walter has blown his nose and produced a golden egg in a handkerchief. He scowls.

“Yeah, well, _some_ papers go in for actual journalism,” he mutters, and starts pointedly perusing the funny pages.

Walter flushes.

This is a reference to an awkward conversation that took place back in the spring, between Walter, Toby and another man at the station who has since moved to womenswear. Walter was in the habit of dividing his twenty-minute break between the _Gazette_ cryptic crossword, which he can now complete about a third of in ten minutes, and the front pages of the _New Frontiersman._

There had been a headline about a franchise of films depicting excessive licentious behaviour, bankrolled by a producer apparently set on corrupting the minds of young Americans. _KIKES AND DYKES IN HOLLYWOOD HELL_ , the headline had read.

“You read that shit?” the other man had said to Walter.

Walter hadn’t looked up.

“You actually read that shit?” the other man had continued. “Sitting here with us, holding up a paper that says ‘kike’?”

“It’s not the headline,” said Walter, still not looking up, “it’s the story. Serious accusations. Worth taking seriously.” He knows the power that a movie can have on a mind – just ask Sam Spade. He had not really registered the ‘us’; he is so used to excluding himself from groups, from social circles and centres of solidarity, that it sounds natural.

“I’ll take the _Frontiersman_ seriously when it doesn’t fucking goose-step,” said the other man, but Toby had talked over him,

“That the paper that thinks there’s a global conspiracy for Jewish world domination? Like, Jewish people are secretly in charge?”

“The theory has been floated,” Walter had said, deadpan as possible. The other man muttered something, but Toby had replied,

“So… I’d say two-thirds of this station is Jewish. Me and all. You must have worked with other Jews at your last place; my uncle’s up at your old warehouse.” He had given Walter a smile that was all incisor and no humour. “We look like we’re at the top of a global conspiracy to you?”

Walter thought, then, of Moshe Hamburg, who had responded to his questions about private detectives all those years ago, a man whose back was bowed from the years spent hunched over a Singer. He thought about the quiet of the men he worked with, their similar exhaustions – the same flavour as his – the long days they put in, racking up hours to take home meagre wages, sitting with the heat in the summer and the biting cold in the winter. He thought of what little he knew about the team he sewed with, some Jewish, some not; how they worked not just to cover rent, as he did, but to feed families, to send money to relatives, to support children and parents, pay for medical bills; how if anything, with his solitude, his lack of dependents, he had it the easiest. He thought about some of the older men (and women), who spoke different languages, who came shrouded in memories of missing lands, missing loved ones, with a tilt to their posture like leaning plants hardened to root shock and frost.

“No,” he had replied.

He had folded up the _New Frontiersman_ and tucked it away under the table. The other men along the table had exchanged glances, raised eyebrows, but Toby had just said,

“Good.”

Walter never brought the _New Frontiersman_ into work again. He still bought both the _Gazette_ and the _Frontiersmen_ , but they were like the bass and soprano in a choir. Between them, in their overlapping reportage, he could hear the strange melody of the streets. He tried to be careful to watch for discordant notes. And he didn’t _like_ Toby – he didn’t much _like_ anyone – but he had some respect for the brusque grace of Toby’s intervention.

So when Toby says, “I saw that photo. After the fire,” Walter keeps his head down and listens.

“Fags, right?” says Joe.

“You asking me to judge that on one photo?” says Toby. He sounds tired. But they all sound tired. “If you’re actually asking, I’d say one of them looked scared. The bird guy.”

“Nite Owl,” says Walter, and again there is an uncomfortable ripple along the table, as the workshop station is forced to acknowledge that the grim little bantam who radiates hostility does, in fact, hear them when they talk, is, in fact, capable of responding.

“Yeah,” says Toby, who is the only man unfazed. “Nite Owl looked scared. Like he was afraid that Dalmation-faced detective was gonna die on him if he let go.”

“Scared. You think he’s cowardly?” asks Walter.

Toby could give Dr Chea a run for her money in the Mild As Milk expression Olympics. “Dunno if it’s cowardly to care about somebody,” he says.

“Sounds faggy to me,” says Joe triumphantly, and then the bell goes and the twenty minutes are up.

In Walter’s head, the words _care about somebody_ are ringing louder than the bell.

He does not clock off until 6pm today.

He is filled with a frantic stirring, like insects are walking all over his veins.

He needs to see Daniel, immediately.

The way the day goes, it’s like someone has poured molasses into the clock hanging over the warehouse floor. Walter has never seen those hands move slower.

He _needs_ to see Daniel.

When he get back to his walk-up, he dresses as Rorschach for the first time in nearly a week – the longest he’s been out of uniform since Rorschach made his debut, and that includes when he was dealing with the infected stab wound that left such an impressive scar by his hip. At this hour, the July sun is still high and bright, but Rorschach knows a route along back streets, subways and rooftops that will get him to the Nest as invisible as a sewer rat.

It is only when he’s already walking through the tunnel, the ironic slow-clap of his footsteps echoing ahead of him, that the thought occurs: Daniel might not want to see him. Daniel might, in fact, not be there.

Suddenly this feels like a walk to the gallows.

Please, he finds himself thinking, though he doesn’t know who he’s addressing. Just. _Please_.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

There is, in fact, the sound of jazz at the end of the tunnel.

Rorschach steps into the Nest.

“Hello, Ralph,” says Daniel, who is wearing shorts and a limp white shirt. He’s sitting at the drafting desk, facing the mouth of the tunnel, with his ankles crossed. He looks like he’s been there for some time.

“Daniel,” says Rorschach.

He stops at the mouth of the tunnel. They stare at each other. Rorschach takes his standard posture: weight evenly distributed on firmly planted feet, shoulders back, head high, fists balled in pockets so there are no witnesses to the way his fingers twist.

“You know,” says Daniel, “it’s funny. I should be hearing you apologising right now. But all I can think to say is ‘sorry’.”

“Don’t need to apologise.”

“There are times,” Daniel says, and Rorschach realises his voice is shaking, “when your habit of dropping pronouns feels like a perfect smokescreen, not for your accent, but for the exact and scientific gauging of how much of an asshole you’re being.”

Rorschach takes a couple of cautious steps forward. He is still favouring his left leg; he notices Daniel noticing. “ _You_ don’t need to apologise to _me_ ,” he says, and now he realises his voice is shaking too.

Daniel watches, Rorschach waits. Then there’s a bang loud as a gunshot as Daniel chair is pushed back so violently is hits the concrete floor. The echoes haven’t died away before Daniel is in front of him, gripping his upper arms. He is being shaken back and forth. He feels like a dead poppy, red petals gone, rattling pathetically in the force of a furious storm.

“I thought you might be _dead_ ,” Daniel shouts. “No one had heard from you! You weren’t anywhere! I stayed in the city all week and it was like New York had _buried_ you. You didn’t _tell_ me! You didn’t _tell me anything_!”

“Didn’t intend to worry –” Rorschach croaks, but Daniel keeps shouting over him.

“I don’t know a fucking thing about you. I don’t know where you live, what you look like. I don’t even know your name. I couldn’t find you! I thought you were –”

“Thought wrong,” says Rorschach hoarsely. “Rumours of death much exaggerated. Thanks to you. Saved my life.”

Daniel inhales sharply. He stops shaking Rorschach and instead squeezes his arms hard, lifts him towards his face until Rorschach is forced to stand on the balls of his feet. They are close enough that he can see the livid red veins in Daniel’s eyes, the raw pink limning of his nostrils. He puts his gloved hands on Daniel’s waist, to steady himself.

“I’m. So sorry,” Walter says, and then his throat closes up.

Daniel lets the inhaled breath out, slowly, and it ghosts across the latex. He lets Rorschach down but he doesn’t let him go.

“I thought that the last conversation we’d ever have,” Daniel begins, voice all bleached out, then stops, starts again. “That your last memory of me,” and he can’t continue.

“My fault,” says Walter. He cannot bring his voice back under his control, into Rorschach’s pitch; for as long as Daniel is holding his shoulders, he feels like caught sparrow. “Stayed away. Leg was healing. And. Thought you’d be angry. Hadn’t realised you might – didn’t think it through.” He breathes hard against the mask and he knows this causes the ink to gather around his mouth and nose, making hieroglyphs of yearning where he can’t express it with words. “Not used to people caring about where I am. Been alone for years.”

Daniel’s lower lip trembles. "Rorschach."

“Don’t understand it,” mumbles Walter. “You're more valuable to me than I am to you.”

This seems to throw Daniel, and he bites his lip. “It’s all the tech, right,” says Daniel, then he laughs, suddenly, a little too loud, and drops his hands. Rorschach snatches his own from Daniel’s waist. He takes a step back, takes stock of Daniel’s face. It wears a mask of good humour.

“The boy’s OK,” Daniel says, now, in a completely different voice, friendly and barely shaking at all. “From the fire. I checked. I thought you’d – want to know.”

“Good,” says Rorschach hollowly.

“I checked on your creepy doctor too,” adds Daniel. “Just in case. I thought she might have – anyway. Your friendship’s had a good effect on her. She seems to have given up the knives.”

“Yes?” says Rorschach, not really listening.

“Travels all the way into the Bronx to visit a temple and hang out with her friends. That’s pretty much been her week.”

It occurs to Rorschach, way back in the filing system in his skull, that Dr Chea has heeded his warning and is trying to play innocent for Ozymandias’s benefit. Too little too late, he thinks sourly, like everything else in this life.

“We’re not going on patrol tonight,” says Daniel, and Rorschach feels the guillotine start to descend. This is it, the moment Daniel formally ends their partnership. But then Daniel says, “I saw you limping. I’m not risking you catching a life-threatening injury before we close this case. Tonight, we’re going to eat at a civilised hour and plan our takedown.”

Colour and sound leaches back into the room. Normality has been restored.

“All men are gourmets at midnight,” says Rorschach, drily, and Daniel laughs again.

He turns and walks with deliberation to the drafting table. Rorschach follows. He feels as if they’ve both just witnessed the manifestation of some ancient, legendary terror, and then strolled right past it. He can’t imagine what he could have said or done to make that scene play right. He keeps – he realises with a white, wet wave of shame – giving Daniel Walter, when what Daniel wants is Rorschach.

The drafting table is spread with papers from Goliath. There’s also a lump of something wrapped in oily rags. Rorschach pokes it.

“Archie’s owl pellets?” he asks.

“Oh,” says Daniel, and there’s something odd in his voice again. “No. I started making. It’s not finished. It’s um.”

Rorschach twitches the rags aside.

“It’s a grappling gun,” says Daniel. “Gas-powered.”

“Neat,” says Rorschach, and he can’t keep the old delight in Daniel’s hardware innovations out of his voice.

“It’s for you,” says Daniel. “It’s. Um. When I thought you were. And then I hoped maybe if. You were still alive. I needed distraction. And to. Make sure. You don’t dive out of any more windows.”

Rorschach nudges the rags a little further aside. The grappling gun glows a beautiful red-gold.

“Oh,” he says.

“Yeah,” says Daniel.

Rorschach squints at a small inscription on the side of the glowing metal. There is his mark, the reflecting ‘r’s, rendered with a fastidious delicacy that tugs oddly at his heart. Below them is a circle, containing a smaller, upside-down triangle. He stares. If he lets his gaze get woozy, it almost looks like the head of an owl, and the ‘r’s are its wings mid-flap.

It suddenly occurs to him that he has spent months thinking about Daniel, thinking about the rose garden of Daniel’s body, thinking about the way he feels about Daniel, thinking about what it means for him to feel the way he does about Daniel, thinking about his own body and what it wants from Daniel, thinking about how to suppress the hideous desires that drive him grotesquely towards Daniel, thinking about how his body might receive Daniel, but he hasn’t thought very much about what Daniel is thinking about him.

He turns and stares at Daniel.

“Surprise,” says Daniel softly.

Rorschach doesn’t waste another thought. He lets his body move. He hooks an elbow around Daniel’s neck and drags him down like the tide.


	18. Sugar Cubes

There’s a moment, less that a second, where Rorschach thinks Daniel will either heave back or drop his head, fraternal, onto Rorschach’s shoulder and pat his back. In a flicker, he sees it: an embrace neutralised.

The whole image washes clean away when Daniel presses his mouth against Rorschach’s mouth.

His lips slide over the latex. Rorschach parts his against the suddenly slick material, imagines the ink gathering where Daniel warms it. A whine scrapes across the back of his throat. He has balled his fist in Daniel’s shirt, dragging him closer with something like anger.

Daniel’s fingers scrabble urgently on his back, pull at his lapels, at his scarf. Hot fingers slide just under the edge of the mask.

Rorschach jerks away.

They take one another in. Rorschach realises he has bunched his fists against his chest and forces himself to lower them. Daniel’s glasses have actually steamed up. He holds up his hands like a man asking not to be shot.

“Sorry,” he whispers. “Only the mouth. I promise. I wasn’t – I wouldn’t have – not unless you showed me first.”

Rorschach hesitates, then hooks his fingers under the mask and pulls it up as far as the end of his nose. He doesn’t feel able to show more. Even now he struggles to imagine his own face, and he doesn’t want to reveal anything to Daniel that he hasn’t catalogued and controlled absolutely first.

The air around them seems to flex, pulled into the curious gravity they’ve created. There’s another taut moment, then Daniel drops his face into his hands.

“How long have you known?” he mumbles through his palms.

“About you?”

Daniel, apparently too mortified to speak, nods, face still covered.

“Hurm. Six seconds?”

The hands drop immediately. “ _What_?” Rorschach says nothing. His own voice is strange to him – neither Rorschach nor Walter, a pitchless, floating thing he can’t distinguish. “So, wait. You _didn’t_ know?”

Another moment of silence.

“Why did you…” Daniel trails off.

_Needed to gauge your reaction. Curious about what you’d do. Imagined it often. Checking for weaknesses. Intended to hurt you. Intended to thank you._ In the end, Rorschach opts for the truth. “Don’t know.”

Daniel drags his hands through his hair. “Did you – _do_ you want…”

_Never wanted anything less. Never wanted anything more._ “Don’t know.”

Daniel nods and leans against the drafting desk. “A truly classical example of your scintillating emotional insight,” he says, and his voice is steadier. “Well done.”

“Kissed me back,” Rorschach says, a little petulantly. “How long have you known?”

“About you? I haven’t.” Daniel’s mouth twitches. “I don’t.” He sighs. “Sometimes I dream about you, and we have this conversation, and it’s so vivid that the next morning I’m convinced it’s happened, and we’re already on the other side of it, for better or worse. I’m still half wondering if I’m going to wake up.”

He looks owlishly at Rorschach over his glasses, a rather appealing mixture of disapproving professor and short-sighted Boy Scout. Rorschach is thinking, _he dreams about me,_ in a monotone tenor of thought that is more panicked than panic.

Daniel breathes out hard through his nose, steps forward to close the gap between them. Rorschach doesn’t move, not to flinch away or respond in kind. He lets Daniel run the tips of his fingers along his jaw, the vulnerable points in his throat, his lips. He keeps his lips pressed closed. He doesn’t know what will happen if he lets them part; he’s afraid he’ll be so overcome that he’ll bite. But Daniel doesn’t force anything. He just touches, so, so gently. All at once it’s too much to bear – too much softness, too much tenderness, like being choked on roses. He reaches up, taps Daniel’s hand, very lightly. Daniel chucks him under the chin, as he might a cat, and drops his hand.

“Locked up tight,” Daniel murmurs. “That’s the only read I’ve ever got on you. I can’t see your eyes, so I’ve had to read your expression through your mouth. And you lock it up when you see me looking.” He looks thoughtfully down at Rorschach. “I bet you grind your teeth,” he says, in the same dreamy romantic voice, then grins when Rorschach scoffs.

“No, really,” he says, in a more normal tone. “I can practically see the muscles ticking through your mask. You should start chewing Juicy Fruit or something.”

“Flavourless plastic with no nutritional value, serving only to blister sidewalks,” Rorschach replies, on safer ground now that he can disapprove of something. Daniel rolls his eyes.

“Okay, wait,” he says, then pulls away so suddenly that Rorschach blinks – hidden, thankfully, by the mask – and heads towards the stairs. A few seconds more, and Rorschach can hear him in the kitchen, banging open cupboards.

The room around him fuzzes. His vision gets starry. Tiny little earthquakes erupt all over his body. He can’t stop trembling.

This is what happens when he lets the body take over. It goes too far and loses control.

Laboriously, sweating cold horrors, he picks the fallen chair up from the floor and sits on it as Daniel bounces back down the stairs, carrying a green canister.

“Here,” says Daniel, holding it out.

“Ehh?”

“Sugar cubes,” says Daniel, in a voice that suggests he believes he is being normal. When Rorschach doesn’t respond, he flips the lid of the canister and pulls out a single wrapped cube. “It’s better than grinding your teeth and it’s less, ah, inclined to stick to the pavement than chewing gum.”

Rorschach is about to protest – very stupid interlude, Daniel – when it occurs to him that a sugar spike might help with the shakes. He takes the cube, unwraps it, and tosses it in his mouth. Daniel’s not wrong, he _is_ tense, and he crunches down hard.

Daniel is gazing at him. He risks a little unlocking – the barest hint of a smile.

The canister hits the floor with a bang as Daniel throws himself forward, covers Rorschach’s mouth again.

It’s different, without the mask. It’s Walter who gasps, Walter who kisses back, whose mouth is filled with the shocking sweetness of pure sugar melting on two tongues, who knows that from now on sugar cubes will always taste like kissing Daniel. It’s Walter who surges up, clinging to Daniel’s big shoulders, the small of his back in the crook of Daniel’s elbow.

He has never kissed anyone, never been kissed. He is amazed to feel the effects of the kiss in his toes, all up and down his spine. He aches between his legs and he aches in the arches of his feet and he aches across his chest. He thinks he could never be kissed enough.

Daniel makes a noise like a swallowed sob, pulls Walter against him. Something hard and hot bumps against Walter’s thigh, grazes him where the ache is deepest. The sensation makes his hips buck, once, uncontrollably. He emits a terrible animal cry and pushes Daniel away.

Daniel stumbles back, catching the edge of the drafting desk as he goes. He’s panting. They both are. Rorschach holds his own breath to make the sound stop, drags the back of his hand across his mouth. It comes away wet. He stares at the saliva glistening on the leather of his gloves.

Daniel croaks, “Sorry.”

He shakes his head, just once, sharp and stiff. He doesn’t know whether he’s indicating forgiveness or refusing to hear the apology. Gradually, their breathing slows.

“Are you.” Daniel lifts his thumb to his mouth, bites off a sliver of skin with a snap. “Um. Because I’ve never. With a man, I mean. Some people – maybe you think it’s, uh – not right –”

“Never have,” mutters Rorschach.

“Mm. No. I guess I didn’t really think so. Do you – is there – a girlfriend? Wife?” He smiles weakly. “It would be a really bad start to my superhero career if I turn out to be a homewrecker.”

Rorschach, still staring at the wet patch, begins to take off his gloves. “ _Never_ have.”

Daniel visibly startles; his head jerks. “Oh,” he says. “You mean –”

“Mean dictionary definition of word ‘never’, yes.”

Daniel mouths like a landed fish. “Oh,” he says again, as his mouth is already in the right shape.

Rorschach’s gloves are off. His hat has been knocked down in the clinch. He unwraps his scarf, staring at the desk. He cannot bring himself to look up. It’s not Daniel’s eyes that he doesn’t want to meet. Some childish superstition, a whimsical if-I-can’t-see-it-then-it’s-not-there dream logic, is preventing him from looking at what he had felt so hard against his leg. He doesn’t want the suggestion of its shape in Daniel’s shorts, the clarity of the image; he knows his mind will take him to a morbid reference library of memories, and once he’s in that archive, he doesn’t know how he will leave intact.

“What should we do?” asks Daniel, boyish, nervous.

Rorschach sits back down in the chair. He’s much too hot in the trench coat, but his body is firing madly; he has things he would prefer not to reveal in this room right at this moment.

“Same as fifteen minutes ago. Take Big Figure down.”

Daniel shuffles closer. He sees the pastel cloth of Daniel’s clothes from the corner of his eye. “After that?” Daniel asks, his voice sandy with fear.

“Medals and ice cream.” This gets a laugh. “Not planned beyond that.”

“No?”

“Never do. Could die tomorrow. Stay focused on the present.”

A flinch, somewhere above him, and he remembers too late how this whole situation started. Oh well, another mistake to add to the catalogue. Daniel’s hand rests on the desk, just in front of him. “Do you want to – forget this?”

“Unlikely to be able to.” The hand balls into a fist and, for a brief, pure moment, Rorschach thinks Daniel is going to punch him, and they can fix this situation that way. But the hand stays put, whitening at the knuckles.

“I’m so sorry,” Daniel mumbles, and the bashed-up tin bucket of Rorschach’s heart fills with shame. Daniel didn’t start this. Daniel just followed the example of the senior member of The Partnership. By the sound of it, he’s been following it for quite a while.

He covers the trembling fist with his hand and feels it untense, unfold. They stay there for a few seconds. Then he takes it, lifts it, and kisses Daniel’s knuckles chastely.

“Never have,” he says, against the knuckles, between gritted teeth. Daniel squeezes his hand. “And. Not sure if I ever can.”

Daniel pulls his hand up and he feels – too much, not enough, his whole body crosshatched with yearning – Daniel’s mouth in the palm of his hand, the full bottom lip warm against his lifeline.

“I only want what you want,” says Daniel, and Walter’s eyes prickle.

“Want Big Figure behind bars,” he manages, and Daniel huffs a laugh into his hand.

“Well,” says Daniel, “your week-long disappearing act has complicated that. They know we’ve got these files. They’ll have changed their plans.”

Rorschach gently pulls his hand away. There’s a sigh, and he isn’t sure if it comes from him or Daniel.

“Tell me what you know,” he says, nailing every syllable to Rorschach’s monotone.

Daniel’s shoulders slump, but he speaks quite lightly and naturally. “The opium trade line file is pretty straightforward. It’s Big Figure’s shipments into the city. Doctored to look legit – original and doctored files are both there. We’ve missed one, which docked at Port Newark. I looked into it. Some amateur mask tried to interrupt the hand-off.”

“What’s he said?”

“Not much, unless he said ‘ow’ before they put five bullets in his head.” Daniel pulls a face. “The shipment before that was the failed handover on the Hudson, back in the spring. Which _I_ stopped. With no help, I seem to remember.”

Rorschach grunts. “Next handover?”

“Next week, purportedly, but there’s no way they’ll go through with it, or use the port they’ve listed.”

“Hurm. Operation Lethe file?”

“Bank accounts. Statements of capital. It’s a big folder full of evidence of, just, like, so many dollars.”

“Looked into them?” asks Rorschach.

Daniel clicks his tongue and then settles himself on the concrete floor, surrounded by spilled sugar cubes, and crosses his legs like a schoolboy. “Rorschach,” he says, “I’ve spent the last week thinking you were dead. Bearing in mind what you now know, how much mental space do you think I have been devoting to looking up a bunch of bank accounts?”

Rorschach leans forwards so his elbows are on his knees. A puff of acrid sweat-smell rises from the collar of his coat as he moves. He wants to take the trench and jacket off, but he needs, _needs_ , to rely on Rorschach, and the costume is like armour.

“I would have,” he says.

Daniel smiles mirthlessly. “Oh, I know. Believe me.”

The air is crackling again and Rorschach knows he shouldn’t try to make it spark, but he’s hot and he’s stressed and he’s filled with angry longing. “When did it start?”

“Operation Lethe?”

“Know very well what I’m asking.”

Daniel draws a deep breath and leans back. “After your weirdo doctor stabbed you and I had to stitch it up. Suddenly you were human to me. You’d always seemed kind of, I don’t know, like machine before then. Built for breaking stuff. Once I saw – your body, I guess – I just – it bothered me. Knowing it was flesh under there. Knowing there was a paper-white redhead below the costume. I fixated on the idea of _you_. I wanted to get to know you. I told myself I wanted us to be friends. I _kept_ telling myself I wanted us to be friends. Until one morning I woke up and I went to the bathroom mirror to brush my teeth and I realised I couldn’t look myself in the eye.”

_You’re a redhead_ , Rorschach thinks. His head is cluttered with echoes.

Daniel smiles at him. “I cannot believe you made friends with her, by the way. Maybe _I_ should have stabbed you.” He drums his nails on the concrete. “Okay, your turn.”

Rorschach sits up and presses his fingers against his mouth. It takes him a few seconds to gather the evidence. He lets the fingers slide away. “First time I saw your face,” he says, quietly. “Instantaneous.” He pauses. “Awful.”

Daniel makes a noise then, a laugh but with something sad and broken glinting in it. “Well,” he says, and the sad, broken thing is in his voice too, “you’re not as tragic a case as me. I _still_ haven’t seen your face. And look at me.”

“I do. All the time.”

“Oh, don’t,” Daniel bursts out, and gets up off the floor. His face is pinched; Rorschach realises he’s holding back tears. “This is _stupid_. I’m going to look up those bank account holders.”

In 1965, Daniel only has one desktop computer, on the other side of the basement wall; the panorama of screens is some years off. Rorschach listens to him tapping at the keyboard as if it has offended him. The wall between them is a relief. He makes an effort to marshal his thoughts, tamp his body in place. He is sure Daniel is doing the same thing.

“I’ve checked the names against the address book,” Daniel calls. “Two are Goliath executives. The third guy, Thomas Ryan, doesn’t seem to be anyone.”

“Fake name?” Rorschach suggests.

“Maybe. Or a fake person.” Tap, tap, tap. Pause. _Taptaptaptap._ “Huh. The _really_ interesting thing is that all three names are on the charter for a private company. Registered last year.” Clickity-clack. Tap tap. “Medical company. Ryan Jameson Ruiz Limited.”

“What are you looking at?” asks Rorschach, intrigued despite himself.

“Tax records. New York State Department of Taxation and Finance started digitising their records in the ‘50s. So I, uh, keep a copy of the database. Like the address book in Archie. Manually updated.”

“Legally?”

“Well.”

Behind the wall, more tapping, then a whistle. “Shit. Rorschach. You’re going to want to look at this.”

Rorschach gets up and stalks round the wall into the other basement room, rolling down his mask as he goes. Daniel is pointing at something on the screen. “Registered address for Ryan Jameson Ruiz.”

He squints at it. “Address for Sugarbowl. Big Figure’s new nightclub.”

“Yep!” Daniel claps his hands together. “I love a narrative call-back! I can’t wait to visit. We both had a bad time last time and can you _imagine_ how stressed we’re going to be now!”

Rorschach glances at his face. Daniel is grinning, but it’s a touch maniacal, as if invisible fingers are hooked into his mouth and pulling them at the corners.

“No. Will go alone,” he says, and Daniel’s face drops.

“I’m just kidding. I know this is important. I’m not going to let, uh, all of this get in the way of us doing the job.”

“Neither am I.” Rorschach looks down at his hands. Red-gold hair. Freckles. Bruised knuckles, hard and dry. Two fingernails purple almost to the quick, snapped when mismanaging a climb, healing slowly. Fallible hands. Hands that grasp longingly when they should stay balled in pockets. “Here’s the plan.”

Daniel drags his fingers through his hair, his face a rictus of upset, but doesn’t interrupt.

“Priority is to find out date and place of next drop-off. Have the paperwork. Link between underworld dealer and legitimate enterprise easiest way to expose Big Figure, as Goliath will want a scapegoat. Will investigate Sugarbowl myself. You ask Hollis to pull police files on Thomas Ryan while you’re away.”

“I’m not away,” says Daniel. “It’s the summer holidays.” He executes a mock-bow from the chair. “I’m quite literally here all week.”

“Good. Can cover double the ground if we split up.”

Daniel looks as if Rorschach is deboning him, sentence by sentence. His slouch is taking on an increasingly sunken angle. “You want us to separate,” he says hollowly.

“Yes. Sensible.”

“Or avoidant,” Daniel mutters. “And if I find Thomas Ryan? Do you want me to shine a giant Rorschach blot onto a cloud?”

“Leave a note in my maildrop.”

“You have a _maildrop_?” Daniel sits up. “Do you not think it might have been useful for me to know this _months ago_?”

“Wasn’t necessary,” says Rorschach. His skin feels five sizes too small and full of pins. Daniel’s never been so combative. He hadn’t realised the extent to which he’d relied on Daniel’s admiration, his boyish awe, his enthusiasm.

Daniel scoffs.

“Fine. Just like not telling me you were alive, I guess. Where is it, then?”

“Trash can opposite Gunga Diner,” says Rorschach. He gives the address. “Leave post under rim. Will be able to check every day.”

“Why? Do you live near there?”

The question hangs in the curdled air. Rorschach is struck by how quiet the basement is, despite its size. Breezeblock and secrecy insulate it from the outside world. When he swallows, it’s audible to both of them.

“Yes,” he says.

Daniel doesn’t exactly smile, but his face softens. “Okay. If Thomas Ryan turns out to be anyone, I’ll send you a postcard.” He pauses. “How close do you live to the Diner?”

“Don’t push it.”

With a huge sigh, Daniel shifts sideways to lean his elbow on the desk – narrowly missing his keyboard – and props his chin up. “How come I never get to say that?” he asks. “When you go stamping about with your death wish. When you use horrible language. When you kiss me and then tell me you don’t want to see me anymore.”

“I _do_ want to see you,” snaps Walter. “That’s the _issue._ We are not _focusing._ ”

Daniel reaches out and circles his index finger around a button on Rorschach’s coat. The movement makes all the saliva gather under Rorschach’s tongue. He wants to suck the finger. The realisation arrives fully formed and extremely visually detailed.

“Should we eat?” asks Daniel, and he can’t stay a moment longer, he can’t bear it.

“Find out when the shipment is arriving,” he says, pulling away. “Leave a note in the maildrop. If I find out before you,” he pauses, “I know where to find you.” He pauses again. “Going now, Daniel.”

He walks back into the other room, hands in pockets. The shakes have started again and he hopes they’re not visible. When he turns back (why, why does he turn back?) he sees Daniel slumped against the wall, arms folded, head down. The shakes get worse.

“Finish the case,” he says hoarsely. “Then… can talk.”

“Sure,” mumbles Daniel, staring at the floor.

Rorschach should leave – he’s good at leaving – but it’s as if he’s sunk ankle-deep into the concrete. He stares about a little wildly, and spots his hat on the floor. He kneels down, grabs it, lurches forward to pluck his scarf from the drafting desk. There’s sugar cubes everywhere. He starts to gather them up.

“Leave it,” says Daniel tiredly, “I’ll do it,” but he puts them in his pockets, then walks quickly to Daniel, holding one out. Daniel takes it. “Thank you,” he says gravely, “for this gift of my own sugar.”

“A reminder.” Walter clears his throat. “Because the taste,” and that’s all he can manage. Daniel throws him a bittersweet look over the frame of his glasses.

He pulls another cube out of his pocket and unwraps it. He rolls up his mask with his left hand. He puts the cube between his lips. He puts his hands on Daniel’s shoulders and rises onto the balls of his feet.

They do it very slowly, this time. Daniel keeps his eyes open; he knows, because he does too. There’s a gap between their bodies that belies the agonising, ecstatic sensuality of their kiss. God, kissing. _Kissing_. Does everyone who discovers kissing feel like they’ve invented it? Walter wonders.

The sugar isn’t quite dissolved when he pulls away, and grains glitter on Daniel’s lower lip. Daniel slides them into his mouth with his middle finger. It’s too much. Walter’s vision goes starry again.

“Don’t overindulge, it’s very bad for you,” says Daniel, and there’s a suggestion of a smile on his face.

“Will be back,” Rorschach says.

“Good. I’m too young to have white hairs. Now please, if you’re leaving, get out, because I need to have a big cathartic cry and then an identity crisis and _then_ I need to make dinner.”

So Rorschach rolls down his mask and leaves. He feels Daniel’s eyes on him all the way to the tunnel.

About halfway down the tunnel, an electric restlessness starts crawling against his veins. His body churns and clamours. He doesn’t know how to make it stop keening. He breaks into a run. He takes his body with him.

He doesn’t remember the journey back to his walk-up. Not because he’s losing time – or maybe he does – he’s not sure – but his mind can only see the kiss, feel the kiss, taste the kiss. It’s like he’s flying. It doesn’t feel bad, but it also doesn’t feel safe.

When he makes it home, he all but rips off his clothes. It is _too hot._ He needs a cold bath. There’s practically an ecosystem between his back and his shirt.

Ten minutes later, sitting in half a foot of tepid water, he starts to feel, if not better, then calmer. If he thinks about what just happened, it cuts off the present as completely as a guillotine, so he tries to think _around_ it. To this end, he remembers that Daniel had tried to pull up his mask. He sloshes around in the bath until he’s looking at the mirror on the kitchen counter.

For the first time in a very, very long time, Walter Kovacs really looks at Walter Kovacs.

Daniel had said ‘paper-white’ and, under the scabby flush of sunburn, he is indeed a pale man. Freckles crowd his face. Walter has never seen a murmuration of starlings, seething and flexing in joyful waves across the sky, so he lands on a much grimmer image: his freckles are like a swarm of brownish flies. His mouth is mean and hard and downturned; he notes the scores at the edges that are deep now and will only deepen as he gets older and the world gets worse. He touches his nose, traces its snub end, scrunches it with dislike. His eyes, he thinks, are the colour of the skin that forms on cheap cups of coffee, framed in pale lashes that wipe his gaze with dust. His cheekbones are blunt, his jaw has all the romance of a table edge.

He thinks, with something like awe, I am very ugly.

Then he thinks, Daniel must never see this.


	19. The Bust

The week fans out over the city, failing to stir the broiled air. Rumours of Rorschach’s death, triggered by his unusual absence, have just begun to circulate when he erupts on the scene on Monday night, seeking the location and date of the forthcoming drop-off. “Keep your ear to the ground,” he tells a recalcitrant underworld thug, and illustrates his point by nailing him to the bar by his diamond stud.

Monday bleeds into Tuesday – literally. Bruised underlings are devastated to report to fixers, dealers, heavies and captains that Rorschach is in fine shape.

On Wednesday morning, Walter spots Daniel at his maildrop. Walter is on his way to work; he pauses by the newsstand to pick up the _Gazette_ (he’ll get the _New Frontiersman_ on his way home). He picks Daniel out immediately: the man is emitting nonchalance like a siren. He is leaning against a wall, spring green in a linen button-down. The garbage can is in front of him; he isn’t doing anything with it. He is waiting.

_My hair_ , thinks Walter, distressed. How many other redheads are there on the street? Just one, a woman, bottle brass, smoking a cigarette in a doorway, hands plunged deep in a teal apron. Walter stands out like a lit match among toothpicks. He cannot risk being seen; no, more accurately, he cannot bear being seen.

He lifts the newspaper as if shading himself from the sun and backtracks. He takes a different route to work. He’s five minutes late and his supervisor bawls him out.

On his way home he stops by the maildrop. There’s a note tucked under the rim, slimy with unidentifiable foodstuff. He secretes it in a pocket. His heart is skittering against his ribs. _Stop that_ , he thinks, as he might at a cat chasing shadows.

He reads the note when he gets home, standing in the kitchen with his shoes half off his feet. Daniel has lovely handwriting – smooth and clear, like a technical drawing in text.

_Thomas Ryan alias “Rocky”. Born 1939. Active from ’51 – minor – pickpocketing, burglary, dealing. Lieutenant to Scorpion until Ozymandias take-down, allied to Boss Green from ‘58. Suspect for handful of big drugs and GBH cases, but no convictions. Major burglary/heist (Brooklyn Museum) ’59; 5 years in Sing Sing, cut a deal and was out in 2. Vanished on release May ’61. Boss Green throat cut three months later in Little Italy._

Then, in a much hastier hand, as if scrawled after much thought and five cups of coffee:

_B.F. described as ‘captain’ to Green during police invest. of murder; B.F. took over gang Feb ’62. H. checked records – no mention of B.F. before ’62. Doubt Green gang accepted random new captain!!!!! Ryan must be –!_

Finally, at the bottom, a rather jolly sketch of an owl, mid-flap. Walter squints at the doodle. There is – tiny but unmistakeable – a cube in the owl’s open beak.

He gets into bed and curls up, knees to his chest. His joints feel weak – his elbows, his shoulders, his wrists. He puts it down to the anticipation of bringing down the biggest criminal in his career thus far. He forces himself to think this while his toes curl in the sheets. The note crumples in his fist. After a few minutes, the sweat of his palm turns the paper to tissue.

When he feels he can uncurl his fingers, he stuffs the note under his pillow.

On Thursday morning, he takes the usual way to work. When he gets to the newsstand, he looks up and down the street. No Daniel. He stares at the maildrop. No Daniel. He stands on the kerb with all his features blazing, bold as a mugshot, and there is no Daniel to realise him, recognise him. He’s five minutes late to work again and he gets a bigger bawling out.

Thursday night and the trail of dislocations and breaks he has left across Manhattan finally forms a completed jigsaw. The next drop-off is on Saturday night and is, once again, docking at Port Newark. He strolls into the stale evening air, hot and flat on 42nd Street like a blanket. He decides to call it a night. He’s been out every single evening smashing up the underworld. He needs to keep up his strength.

Friday night and as soon as the sun is under the city, he decides to pay the Sugarbowl a visit. He’ll turn the back offices over, pull what he needs, and arrive at the Nest triumphant with his new information.

The offices of the Sugarbowl are on the fourth floor and exhibit what Rorschach thinks of as gangster chic – plush chairs, shiny side tables, large fern plants. The desk is so massive it seems to have its own gravity; several chairs orbit. He snaps on the anglepoise lamp, rummages through the drawers. Nothing of interest. Accounts – legitimate – correspondence – dull.

A chrome safe occupies the bulk of the converted marble fireplace. He spends a diverting two minutes cracking the safe, which reveals a few guns, some big denomination bills and a number of passports. When he opens them at the ID page, he sees, in every picture, a man with cherub cheeks and dirty blond hair swept back from a low forehead. He doesn’t look good or evil, though he does, distractingly, look quite young. Rorschach reasons that if this is Big Figure, they are about the same age – as per Daniel’s note.

As a man who primarily occupies a walk-up which has barely been renovated since the beginning of the 20th century, one room in Daniel’s brownstone and one room in Dr Chea’s apartment, Rorschach hasn’t had much exposure to the fashions of interior decoration. It therefore hasn’t struck him that this room has a distinctly 1940s feel, as if the occupant has also watched a lot of old films and taken their sense of what a villain’s lair should look like from there.

It does mean that when Rorschach’s eye lands on an obsidian statuette of a black bird of prey, he walks straight over.

“ _The Maltese Falcon_ ,” he mutters, and lifts the bird.

It’s solid. And _heavy_.

“Hurm.”

He puts it back down.

The mount underneath it is hollow.

He puts the bird on the floor and starts to tap and twist the mount. After a few seconds, something gives and the top twists off. There’s a gap underneath, just enough to stow an A5 journal.

Rorschach pulls it out and takes it to the desk. He flicks it open. His throat clogs.

It’s _his_ handwriting.

He stares, uncomprehending, at the text, at the loops of the L and the nervy twist of the B. He watches the words go out of focus and then come back in again. He thinks, _I’m left-handed and my writing slants to the left. This is slanting to the right._

The air seeps back into his lungs. It’s just the handwriting impressed on all children who come through the Charlton Home, a stressed and tenuous copperplate that is supposed to represent stolid literacy.

The memories swim up through the black water, hungry for the air. Young Walter had hated those lessons. Left-handed children were more often than not rapped on the knuckles. Now his natural hand is much looser and simpler, scrawled without flourish.

Of course this isn’t his handwriting. But it _is_ the handwriting of someone who went through the same system.

He flicks through the journal.

He sees:

A list of things the journal-keeper thinks should be invented and would invest in (private airships, TVs with flavour and smells, a hologram Lauren Bacall, phones with tiny screens to make long-distance visual calls, instant ice, a cure for mouth ulcers, a machine for speaking to dogs)

A list of women he has ‘made it’ with, including star rating

Some surprisingly good portrait sketches, some of whom Rorschach recognises as captains and fixers from Big Figure’s circle, more than one of whom he has radically rearranged facially

Notes to self that merge ‘make Pellegrini an offer he can’t refuse’ and ‘dump guns’ with things like ‘order another box of Bollinger’ and ‘new tailor???’ and ‘Slim Jim’s birthday March 5th DON’T FORGET’

Half-remembered song lyrics, some of have been traced and retraced, as if the writer had the lyrics stuck in their head and was going over and over them

A neat flowchart diagram that depicts the leadership team of Ryan Jameson Ruiz (‘me’ above Thomas Ryan, circled, Javier Jose Ruiz, Benjamin Jameson), and its position as a subsidiary of Goliath, as well as some detailed notes about the distribution of Caliburnus, written up as an Excalibur-opiate hybrid

Journal entries

Rorschach reads:

_26 th Jan. _

_Meeting with the bigwigs today. Looked at me like I was a circus freak with a rifle._

_Benny insists I’m thinking too small with usual customer base. Starting to see his point. Every American is a potential junkie. All bodies can get high – banker tailor milkman cleaner professor lawyer line cook. If a doctor tells them they need painkillers, they buy the painkillers. If the pain gets worse, they might stop buying, or they might buy more. But if the pain gets weird – that’s a figged pony, a surefire win._

_So far Excalibur makes pain and craziness. I’ve seen it in the hookers. Bad for business. But Benny’s talking mixing it with opiates. That’s where I come in. Business partner. I could be an executive, I could even have shares, if I raise enough cash. Got plans for that. _

_If we get the dose right, people will queue up to buy it. Because it makes them feel better and they don’t realise it makes them feel worse too._

_I say, how you gonna get doctors to prescribe it. They laugh at me. I guess I don’t know much about how phamasuitical (sp?) companies work. But I know my own business. They have to respect that, even if they think I’m a freak._

This crude description of a synthesized drug flicks the switches along Rorschach’s spine. He rifles through the journal, scanning for ‘Chea’. When he sees the name, his heart rises into his throat as if he’s about to throw it up, but he reads:

_…whining that this coathanger doc is freaking him out. I tell him, Bastien, there’s only so many abortionists willing to do quick work on the stable bitches. You’re probably overworking her, maybe you should try putting a bag on your johnny before you stick it in._

_Bastien pushing on me that this character – Chea – is causing problems, but what sort of trouble can a pussy doctor cause? Poke him in the ovaries? Fuck outta here._

Rorschach swallows his heart back down. He scans the journal while the adrenalin flatlines. He has all he needs: proof that Big Figure is Thomas Ryan, proof that Big Figure is in cahoots with Goliath, proof that Caliburnus is a dangerous drug. It’s only because he can’t turn the detective inside his head off that he takes in the end of a recent entry:

_This is how I’m proving it. That a kid with no mom or pop and no looks and no luck and no one who ever gave a fuck can mean something. No one will forget me._

Rorschach’s fingers curl. The leather of his glove rucks the page.

He’s thinking: I didn’t have anyone either. But I was _good_. No drugs, no whores, no stealing, no taking the easy route. I did the right thing. A good boy. Cleaning up the mess.

In a cold room with a bathtub in the kitchen and rats in the walls and the bread all stale, coming home covered in other people’s blood, six hours before the next shift…

Lost in his head, he doesn’t notice the shadows shift until it’s too late.

Someone grabs his shoulder and hauls him out of the chair. The lamp crashes to the floor and the room snaps to black. Rorschach drives his elbow back but it connects with something padded and unyielding. He pivots and twists, jabs his fingers into a throat, but momentum is against him and he’s slammed brutally into the wall. A heavy arm pins him by the neck; he’s forced to stand on his toes. His night vision has been wiped and he can’t make out the face behind this deadly weight.

“You really ought to have someone watching your back,” says a quiet, humorous voice close to his head.

Rorschach sucks as much air as he’s able to through his crushed windpipe. “ _Nite Owl_?”

The pressure on his throat eases, but he is still pinned. There’s another hand pressing hard on his chest, just enough to hurt. He slides his hands up, feels a smile through his gloves.

“Getting sloppy, buddy,” murmurs Nite Owl into his fingertips. “You could have socked me by now, if you were trying. Something on your mind?”

“Told you I’d investigate Sugarbowl,” Rorschach wheezes, dropping his hands.

“You told me you’d be in touch as well. You haven’t been. I wasn’t even sure if you’d got my billet-doux.”

A prolific reader but a rare speaker, Rorschach has never heard this said out loud and has imagined it pronounced with a hard T and an avian ‘doux’ – dux. He’s getting a little tired of people talking at him in French. This is America, god damn it. “Received information. Found journal which corroborates. Let me down.”

“Get down yourself,” Nite Owl says.

They have been talking in whispers – Nite Owl through pragmatism, Rorschach by reason of a squashed throat – but this challenge cuts through the air. Rorschach doesn’t move.

“No?” says Nite Owl.

“Wouldn’t want to hurt you.”

“How unlike you.”

Rorschach lifts his hands again. He feels Nite Owl tense and shift – he’s preparing for a fight – but all Rorschach does is slide his hands between the gap to cup Nite Owl’s face. His night vision is returning, and he can just about make out the oval of skin between the mask and cowl. He sees a smile broaden.

“Did you miss me?” asks Nite Owl.

He says, “Yes,” before he can choke it, and pulls Nite Owl’s face towards his.

Nite Owl drags his arms out from between them and now his body is flat against Rorschach’s, humming with tension and heat. He pushes the mask up, his palms rolling against the latex, until they’re finally, finally kissing. Rorschach feels rather than hears Nite Owl gasp and pulls his mouth in greedily.

Then Nite Owl sinks his teeth into his lower lip, hard. Rorschach makes a noise sudden enough that Nite Owl springs back. He doesn’t know whether he has winced or moaned. He tests the lip with his tongue, tastes iron.

“Now we’re even,” says Nite Owl.

“Ehh.” He pulls the mask down. Gravity is misbehaving; his legs are hollow and light. “Grab journal. Imagine your ruckus will have attracted attention.”

“ _My_ ruckus,” mutters Nite Owl, but he picks up the journal from where it has fallen by the desk. “Let’s go. Archie’s about a block away, we’ll need to call him down.”

Back on the owlship, up in the air, Nite Owl programmes something in to the main screen and then sets Archie to autopilot. He sits in one chair and Rorschach lowers himself into the other one. The two men take each other in guardedly. The atmosphere simmers.

“Good work on Ryan,” says Rorschach.

“Thanks,” says Nite Owl.

Rorschach points at the journal on the dashboard. “Seems Ryan Jameson Ruiz is a part of Goliath. Planning on marketing a line of painkillers synthesized with Excalibur. Soothes pain while increasing it, driving demand. Smart.”

Nite Owl’s gaze, which has been skittering around the cabin, suddenly swings with unnerving focus to Rorschach’s face. “They’re going to drug up _normal people_?” he says, aghast.

“Probably people with chronic pain,” Rorschach shrugs. “To begin with. Brilliant money-making scheme. Wonder if it’s beginning of behaviour-altering chemical experiment, perhaps with more drugs to come. _New Frontiersman_ has floated similar theories.”

“You don’t seem shocked,” says Nite Owl, shocked.

Rorschach allows himself the mildest physical manifestation of a gloat. He stretches out his legs and crosses his ankles, a posture more relaxed than any stance he has yet taken in Nite Owl’s company.

“Never shocked by human nature,” he says. “Important that we get Big Figure behind bars. Will put Goliath’s plans under scrutiny, delay distribution. And get New York’s biggest drug lord off the streets.”

Nite Owl gets up and starts to pace the cabin. They are at cruising altitude, intent on whatever destination Nite Owl has coded for.

“But it’s awful,” Nite Owl says. “They’re planning to make junkies out of everybody. This isn’t just a gang war. This is way, way bigger than an underworld plot. This is going to affect _normal people_.”

“Middle class people, you mean? People like you?”

Nite Owl stops pacing. “No. That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?” Rorschach is languid, practically lolling. But Walter’s body is prickling hotly.

“I _meant_ ,” says Nite Owl, who is flushing, “law-abiding American citizens. You _know_ it’s worse than just – of _course_ I don’t think _anyone_ should have an addiction forced on them, I just _saying_ it’s a much bigger crime than –”

“Dealing junk to the poor,” finishes Rorschach. “No. Don’t speak.”

“You’re accusing me of –”

“Being lucky,” says Rorschach. “Born safe. Born _normal_. Born knowing that the bile and misery would never come for you if you didn’t go looking.”

Nite Owl steps towards him and he pulls in his legs quickly. A knuckle ghosts across his cheek and he jerks his head away.

“We’re very different people, Nite Owl,” he says, and hears the strain in his own voice.

He stares through the window. He feels Nite Owl gently test his cheek again, with fingertips, and lets the caress sit.

“I worded that badly,” Nite Owl says finally. “I’m sorry. It’s all shitty. We’re fighting for all of them. Everyone who comes to harm, no matter how insignificant.”

Rorschach turns his heads so that the gentle fingers are on his lips. The ink gathers where mouth and fingers meet, the shadow of a kiss he doesn’t make.

“Who _are_ you?” murmurs Nite Owl, and he just shakes his head, pulling away. Some midnight current is rolling through his veins, slowing his thoughts to the speed of a bad poem. How is this going to work? The street-garbage whoreson with no face and the beautiful rich man with a confession complex? Their tenuous connection only exists as long as the costumes do.

“Not the address for the Nest,” he says, to distract himself.

“No. We’re going to the drop-off.”

Rorschach leans forward to read the address on the screen. “Drop-off is tomorrow. Port Newark. Found out myself.”

Nite Owl settles himself into the pilot’s seat. “Oh Theodore,” he says, some of his buoyancy returning. “Your methods are admirably direct, but they are also, how do I put this, very _noticeable_. People really stay punched after you’ve finished with them. Big Figure knew someone had grassed. They changed the drop-off.”

Rorschach stares at the window and is grateful that the mask hides the colour his cheeks turn.

“And when we get there?” he grunts.

Nite Owl smiles beatifically. “We hit them. Super hard.”

“Just like the good old days,” says Rorschach. Neither of them remarks that the good old days were a few months ago, that what has happened between them has sprung up in that time, like a forest putting out a century’s worth of trees in minutes.

Tonight, the sky is leaden and heavy, looming with the threat of rain. The ship is caught between two dangerous planes – the storm clouds, and the city.

Nite Owl takes Archie down to a warehouse and a sort of sweet trepidation tugs at Rorschach’s heart.

“Site of our first date,” says Nite Owl drily. “Don’t tell me I never take you anywhere nice.”

“Keep mind on job, Nite Owl,” growls Rorschach, while his mind replays the birth of The Partnership like a film noir reel. If he’d known – if he’d known – He shakes it off, digs in his coat pocket for a sugar cube, ignores Nite Owl’s shy, triumphant grin.

They make their way to the dock on foot.

The drop-off is taking place as they approach. In fact, it looks like an exchange – crates marked _bananas_ are being unloaded, steel boxes marked _Red Cross_ are being loaded onto a bijou container barge. The numbers are in the favour of the men on the dock – 7 to 2. Rorschach likes it when the odds skew that way. It gives him more square footage of flesh to damage.

“Are you wearing a stab vest?” whispers Nite Owl.

“No.”

“Chain mail?”

“No.”

“Bubble wrap?”

“No.”

“The blessing of God?”

“God only knows.”

“Cool. Thought so. In that case, please wait for me to throw the smoke grenade before you do anything. I’ll take the guy shaped like a trapezoid and the one in the red shirt. They’re definitely armed. Don’t get shot to avoid having the conversation with me afterwards.”

Nite Owl presses a sudden kiss against Rorschach’s cheek. Before Rorschach can protest, he’s hurled the grenade.

The night becomes a picture.

_This_ is what Rorschach allows himself to remember, years later, when he remembers 1965. The way the two of them launched into the smoke and fell on the heavies like an ancestral curse. The cries of shock and the shouted orders, cut short by well-timed punches. The crack of jawbones under his fist, the soundtrack of retribution. The merry spatter of blood, prefiguring the patter of rain that was coming, surely coming, to wash the streets clean.

1965 is just this: a comic strip. The rest falls in the black water.

All in all, it takes slightly less than seven minutes.

Rorschach’s whole body blossoms with pain. He is perfectly in the present. Adrenalin washes through him, acidic, dissolving debris. Violence is such a palate cleanser.

He helps Nite Owl tie the men up. Four them are still conscious, but they all know better than to fight back at this stage. He takes the guns, unloads bullets all over the dock. Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle.

Nite Owl is levering open a Red Cross box.

“Fuck,” says Nite Owl. “It’s that drug. Caliburnus.”

He lopes over and peers inside. Sure enough, the box is filled with carefully packed vials. Goliath-headed paperwork proclaims that the material is Caliburnus, the Excalibur hybrid, on its way to a medical warehouse out of state.

They have interrupted the distribution.

“You boys are gonna want to stop just there,” says a voice in the darkness.

Rorschach and Nite Owl whip away from the box. The voice had come from near a shipping container; they instinctively form a pincer movement around its general presence.

“I’ve got a gun pointed right at your head,” the voice continues. “So you just take it easy.”

“Never been one for the easy way out,” says Rorschach, and launches himself towards the voice.

He is relying on the darkness of the docks and darkness takes his side. He has dropped and slid to the right just as the first shot goes off, missing him by inches. He dives into the second, which goes wider by several feet. Two more shots in quick succession, towards Nite Owl’s grand sweep of cape, all drama and misdirection – and a third which he can hear hits its target – but Nite Owl’s high-tech breastplate is bulletproof, Nite Owl falls back with an ‘oof’ but no blood. Rorschach throws himself flat on the ground, vaulting far leftward, as the sixth shot rings out. It explodes into a crate of “bananas”.

Rorschach stands up, dusts himself off.

“Might suggest that you take the easy option, however,” he continues, as if nothing has happened. “Come out with your hands up.”

“Or what?” asks the voice.

“Or we’ll go with the hard option,” says Rorschach.

“It doesn’t matter to us which one you pick,” says Nite Owl, who has also managed to get back upright. Only a slight curve to his posture betrays the brutal impact of the bullet, now lodged in the suit. “Easy option will mean we can go and get our dinner a bit earlier. Hard option is more fun though. For us.”

There’s a calculating silence in the shadows. Then, “I’ve got a syringe full of Excalibur too. The pure stuff.”

“Oh cool,” says Nite Owl. “I’ll tell you what, we’ll roll up our sleeves and hold really still to give you a sporting chance at finding a big enough vein. Come on, Tom. Let’s not jerk around all night, eh?”

“Do _not_ call me that,” snaps the voice.

“Whatever you say, Tommy,” says Nite Owl. Rorschach can hear him grinning.

“I’m the _Big Figure_ ,” shouts the voice. “Get it? You do _not_ want to fuck with me, bird boy. Not you, not your blotchy boyfriend neither. I am a huge fucking deal and I’m gonna get huger. You think you’re dealing with some skeezy backstreet crook? Fucking selling dime bags of blow to teens? You have no idea. _No_ idea.”

“You’re just a dollar store gangster to Goliath,” says Rorschach. “A kid playing with the big boys.” He remembers the journal. “A circus freak with a gun.”

There is a sharp intake of breath, and then a face breaks white and furious out of the shadows.

Big Figure is four feet high. And it’s this that freezes Rorschach’s reactions – that stop him from punching out, halting the run-up – that leaves him so stunned that Nite Owl lurches in front of him – so when Big Figure approaches at a run, needle glinting in his fist, Nite Owl’s body is already in the way – so when the fist swings round, it connects with the soft, flexible part of the suit in the hollow of Nite Owl’s hip, sinking home effortlessly – by the time Rorschach overrules his first reaction: _that is a child and I am not going to hurt him_.

He comes to and tackles Big Figure – a grown man and dangerous, swearing, spitting, cursing, ashen-white – to the ground, but it is already too late. When he looks round, he sees Nite Owl’s dragging the syringe from his body, his mouth an arch of horror. The syringe is empty. It’s happened. It’s done.


	20. What Happened

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CN child abuse, mention of child death.

“I told you,” pants Big Figure. He sounds almost as frightened as Rorschach feels. His face is wormily white in the grainy light of the docks. “I told you I’d do it… fuckin’ provoked me, man…”

Nite Owl straightens up, squares his shoulders. “You’re going away for a long time, Big Figure,” he says, and his voice is limp and uninflected. “We have you on drug trafficking and fraud. Aggravated assault, too.”

“You can’t _touch_ me,” says Big Figure, despite all evidence to the contrary – he squirms, one thigh pinned under Rorschach’s knee, pawing ineffectually at his grip. “I got friends in high places.”

“They'll hang you out to dry,” Rorschach says hoarsely. He sounds like his throat has been peeled. Saliva pools in the mask, plasters his chin. “They’ll pull the trigger themselves. You think one small-time drug lord can _measure up_ to Goliath? They’ll let you _hang._ You’re _nothing_ to them.”

“Rorschach,” says Nite Owl sharply. “Tie him up.”

Big Figure is staring into Rorschach’s mask, eyes big and confused, trying to see past the inkstorm into the skin. “Do I know you?” he asks, and Rorschach realises too late he hasn’t even tried to disguise his voice.

He drags Big Figure to a railing by the jetty and ties him. It’s difficult – the fingers he’s using keep vanishing, becoming smaller, ungloved, panicked, pushing at a locked door. The task at hand flashes on and off. Present. Past. Present. Past. Present. Past. An awful noise seethes through the mask. The wet gleam of Big Figure’s eyes disgusts him; all his spare energy goes into resisting sinking his thumbs into them.

Eventually, he manages the knot.

“They won’t thank you,” says Big Figure quietly. Rorschach freezes. Did he hear Big Figure speak? Or is this taking place in his head?

“They won’t,” Big Figure repeats. He’s given up now. His whole body curls in on itself like a pill bug. But his voice is steady. “You think I’m a freak to Goliath? You’re a freak to everyone you’ve ever helped. They’ll treat you like the jumped-up shitty piece of garbage you are if they ever find out. Charlton boy. Unwanted everywhere.”

“Enjoy prison,” says Rorschach, and turns away.

“You’ll see I’m right,” Big Figure shouts after him. “Hey! You come from the same sewer as me, shithead! I can _tell_. No one’s gonna thank you!”

Rorschach moves across the docks but he can’t sense the docks under his feet. He feels like he’s trailing viscera. “Nite Owl. Hospital.”

“Let’s get to Archie,” says Nite Owl, in the same weirdly uninflected voice. Then: “Do you have any idea how long it takes for this stuff to kick in?”

Rorschach can only shake his head.

This is their victory, then, their triumphant take-down: two beaten men slinking through the night, their shared fear souring the air. Nite Owl is chewing his lower lip. When the owlship’s lights throw his face into jaundiced relief, Rorschach can see he’s chewed it raw.

“Get you to a hospital,” he says, and there’s a fleck of pleading in there. “Will tip off police for the docks. Tomorrow, when you’re safe, deliver the paperwork. We did it.”

“I can’t go to a hospital,” Nite Owl says, flatly. He is steering Archie out of the warehouse, into the cloud-clogged sky.

“Pure Excalibur –”

“I can’t go to a hospital,” Nite Owl repeats. “They’ll take my mask. My costume. They’ll find out. And I’ll have to stop. Have to stop being Nite Owl.”

The realisation hits Rorschach like a crowbar to the teeth. “Have to,” he begins, but stops. Have to what? Have to make up for Walter’s failings? His slowness, his stupidity, his garbage carapace barely cloaked by Rorschach’s trappings? “My fault,” he says, instead.

“No,” says Nite Owl, but that’s it – no gentling, no teasing. He’s frightened, Rorschach realises. He doesn’t know when his body will turn against him.

“Any idea what’s going to happen to me?” asks Nite Owl. “How long it lasts? What it’ll do?”

Rorschach shakes his head, pulls off his hat. The inside is stained dark with sweat. He crumples it in his hands. “Don’t know –” and then inspiration lances through the turgid mess in his head. “Don’t know anything,” he says. “But know a doctor who does.”

A beat, then, “Oh, _no_. No, Rorschach.”

“Can’t see other options,” says Rorschach. He leans forward to programme the address.

“It’s just as risky to go to her as a hospital,” snaps Nite Owl. “She _worked_ for Big Figure. The last time she saw me, she tried to cut my head off with a sword.”

“Never worked for Big Figure. Worked for his, eh, _girls_.” Archie describes a graceful semi-circle in the air, changes course. “Medical doctor. Seen it before. Will help.”

Nite Owl is clearly about to protest again, but then he flinches and shudders. His fingers twitch. A bead of blood gathers on his lower lip.

“I think it’s hit,” he croaks.

“Sit back,” says Rorschach urgently, though, why? What does he know about Excalibur? Should he be taking Nite Owl’s temperature? Giving him water? Making him lie down? He has only ever broken bodies. He does not know how to care for one.

They make it to the roof of Dr Chea’s apartment building. Nite Owl is starting to breathe heavily. There are beads of sweat on his upper lip, what could be sweat or tears salting his cheek. As Rorschach helps Nite Owl out of the seat, questions cluster. Has Archie been refuelled recently – can he stay above the clouds for the night? Is there anything Rorschach needs to do before they leave, the dirigible equivalent of checking if the gas is off? Is there anything in the cabin that Nite Owl might want? Why, why, why hasn’t he paid closer attention to what Nite Owl does when he brings Archie home to the Nest? Why is he so _stupid_?

“Nite Owl. Archie. Can’t leave on roof.”

A groan breaks from Nite Owl’s throat, but he gets it under control enough to say, “Send up. Twelve hours of fuel. Take the console, he’ll alert us if – oh my God, Rorschach.”

These last four words are said in tones of devastation. Nite Owl sags against him. “Oh God. Rorschach.”

There have been times when Walter has imagined these vulnerable words breathed into his neck, whispered into his ear. He has even imagined a similar tone, a similar unravelling cadence. He felt ashamed then, but it’s nothing on what rips through him now. He wants to score his brain with a rusty knife. _Whoreson. Made a mess._

He can’t speak, can’t even find words of comfort. Shame has eaten his tongue. He takes Nite Owl down the ramp.

Dr Chea, recurring trope, is in her kitchen. She turns at the sound of two men crashing through her open window, and surges towards them.

Rorschach catches her wrist before she’s able to stick a knife through Nite Owl’s cheek (where did that come from?), but it means he has to let Nite Owl go. Nite Owl slumps against the sideboard, rendered insensible by Excalibur’s horrors.

“You brought a _man_ here,” says Dr Chea, livid. “Into my _home_.”

He twists her wrist hard and hears a click; she drops the knife. This feels as commonplace as a handshake and he wishes that it didn’t, that Dr Chea could just be a normal person. “Help him,” says Rorschach.

Nite Owl slides to the floor. “Or – kill me. Up for – either.”

Rorschach glances down, startled, and Nite Owl gives him a ghastly smile. “Kidding. Ohhhh –”

“You poison him?” asks Dr Chea, retrieving her hand.

“Big Figure. Excalibur. Full syringe. What happens?”

Dr Chea takes a step back, her composure remantled, and considers the man on her floor. “Full syringe? He perhaps will die,” she says. “Or he perhaps will not. His body chooses.”

Rorschach slaps her across the face, which doesn’t change in expression. “ _Stop_ him dying.”

“Epinephrine?” Nite Owl asks from the floor, blood from his bitten lip tracking down his chin. Dr Chea cants her head.

“I understand why you suggest,” she says, “but Excalibur is not opiods. I can give, but the overdose is here too.” She taps her forehead. “Your pain receptors believe in Excalibur. You will feel, I don’t know how to say, an evil ecstasy. I can give you a sedative, but even still you will feel.”

This speech takes too long and Rorschach tries to slap her again, less through anger and more because his limbs feel possessed by a kinetic horror; the slap is not under his control. She catches it absentmindedly.

“More likely to _live_ with sedative?” Rorschach snarls at her.

“No. But less aware, less horrible.”

“Less aware, please,” gasps Nite Owl, and grabs Rorschach by the ankle. “Oh my God. Rorschach. Get her to – switch me off. It’s like I’m – full of needles. Every time – I move – they jump – against my – skin. It’s so _sharp._ ”

“Do it,” Rorschach barks at the doctor, who raises her eyebrows. “ _Do it now_.” She shakes her head and leaves the room.

Rorschach hurriedly kneels and wipes the blood from Nite Owl’s chin with the heel of his palm. “Will be okay,” he says, not believing it. “Won’t let you –”

“Punch the – Grim Reaper for me – eh, Umberto?” says Nite Owl, and every word is jagged with pain. Walter is weeping under the mask, his face fixed but his eyes brimming. To think that Nite Owl is trying to be _kind_ to him –

Dr Chea trots back in with a syringe. “You’re lucky my chemistry kit is a bit illegal,” she says gravely. “Or I would not have this. Vein.”

Rorschach pulls off Nite Owl’s gloves, but then the sleeve is too tight and his hands are shaking too much to roll it up. It’s farcical. He feels like a stupid little boy.

Dr Chea hands Rorschach the syringe and picks her knife off the floor. She hooks a finger in the sleeve and cuts a clean slit up to the elbow, with the air of a socialite forced to handle the washing up. Rorschach all but throws her the syringe and she shoots the sedative home.

“Count to five,” she suggests, then settles back on her haunches. “Take him home now?” she asks Rorschach, hopefully.

“No. Too risky. Need your bed.”

“My _bed_?” says Dr Chea, alarmed.

Rorschach doesn’t bother answering. He wraps his arms around Nite Owl’s chest and heaves him up. Pain spears down his shoulder blade; Nite Owl is heavy and starting to lose consciousness. “Bi’ Feer,” he mumbles, as his legs buckle.

“Will phone police with docks address once you’re safe,” says Rorschach. “How do you feel?”

“Chains – on the insi’.”

He doesn’t know what this means, doesn’t ask. He gets Nite Owl into the spartan chamber where Dr Chea turns her brain off each night. He pulls off the boots, wrestles off the cape and the googles, then is at a loss as soon as he sees Daniel’s tear-starred eyes. He has made this happen: he is a source of pain, a machine that gathers and expels damage, an enemy of the body. On the bed, Daniel groans.

“Watch him,” he snaps at Dr Chea, who has followed their arduous progress and is peering around the doorway. “Need to use phone.”

“Payphone at end of the street, please,” says Dr Chea, edging into her bedroom. “It is not very sensible to use mine.”

He leaves like he’s fleeing, takes to the roof and then the fire escape, pitches along the road. The phone call is frantic, stumbling on details. Walter, not Rorschach, makes it, already half out the booth when the receiver lifts at the other end. He has to get back to Daniel. As he runs back, breathing painfully through a stitch, a thought bobs up: _I left him alone with a violent misandrist_.

_But she wouldn’t, would she?_ he thinks, taking the fire escape’s steps two at a time. _Not if he’s mine_.

He trips, cracks his shin against a metal stair.

_My responsibility, I mean._

From the roof, he swings straight to the window of the bedroom. Dr Chea is bent over Daniel’s body, something gleaming in her hands. A free-flying foot to the ribs sends her tumbling and she curses in a language he supposes is her first. “K’douy pak! Once, in my life, entrez chez moi without hit me!”

“What are you doing?” he rasps, getting between her and the bed. She holds up the glinting thing – a stethoscope. She looks harassed. Rorschach tries to slow his thoughts to walking pace. “Okay,” he says, and she goes placid again. “Sorry,” he adds, uncertainly, then looks down at Daniel before she can respond.

His cowl and hood have been cut free. His entire head is bare, his eyes are flickering under their lids. Rorschach touches a gloved finger to them, rendered weak by their butterfly shudders.

“You saw his face,” he says to Dr Chea. She makes a non-committal noise. “If you tell anyone who he is. I’ll destroy you.”

He looks round to emphasize the point, and is sapped again when he sees in her eyes, in the place where the demon would normally squat, a bare and human kindness. “I _will_ destroy you,” he says.

“I understand,” she says.

“You don’t.” He pushes the hair from Daniel’s forehead. Daniel mumbles something and his forehead creases. When Rorschach lays a tremulous palm on his breastbone, his back arches, then collapses. Rorschach pulls away.

“You cannot help,” says the doctor. “He is locked in with it.”

Rorschach stares at the dishevelled form on the bed. “In pain?”

“Yes.” She stands beside him, deliberating over her thoughts as over a poker hand. Finally: “You want to eat?”

This does make him start. “What? Now?”

She shrugs. When he doesn’t respond, she turns and goes, saying over her shoulder, “I will cook. Decide when I finish.”

She leaves him alone with his mistake.

He kneels and puts his head on Daniel’s chest. The thud of Daniel’s heartbeat is like a distant slamming door. Walter learns, then, that grief occurs outside of time, that wounding sadness can unhook the present from the future, that no future can be felt or touched from the bottom of grief. Or perhaps he is relearning the timelessness of grief, because when it comes, it creeps along familiar paths. Maybe he’s been grieving since he was a boy, moving parallel to time, capable of the sustained act of living only in a single moment.

At one point, Daniel’s twitching hand rests on his head, and he feels the touch all down his spine. Then it’s gone, it’s a fist opening and closing on the pillow, pulsing as a heart does, and Walter can’t remember what is was like to feel those hands caressing his face. He searches for the memory, but it recedes until there’s nothing but a sense of formless black.

A while later – he is increasingly unable to discern when – Dr Chea returns with two bowls. He finds he cannot care that she sees him curled over Daniel in an attitude like prayer. He unbends himself and takes a bowl. It’s filled with a rice porridge that tastes lemony and fishy. She tucks her legs beneath her and sits beside him.

“Borbor with dried shrimp.” She pronounces the last word ‘srim’; he works it out when he eats one. “My mother made it when we were sick.”

Otherwise, they eat in silence. Rorschach thinks about how many meals he has shared with Daniel, each one offered with a gracious equanimity. He is amazed, in retrospect, that he has never felt embarrassed taking so much hospitality from one person. Until the very moment they kissed, Rorschach had never considered that Daniel would ever want to kiss him; now he realises he has also missed a history of tact, of resourceful friendliness, plied for the sole purpose of making him feel comfortable.

Daniel cries out in his body-locked stupor, and Rorschach is again crammed with a kinetic horror. He wants to smash up the world. He throws his bowl, hard, against the wall.

“Not bad,” says Dr Chea, who has ducked. “But they are,” she raps on the melamine of her own bowl, “and so, you cannot break.”

He makes a spiky, inchoate noise and rips her bowl from her hands. This hits the wall too, spraying wet rice across the room.

“Okay,” says Dr Chea, and shuffles out.

She closes the door behind her delicately, and the tut of the latch drives him to his feet. He’s furious, boiling with fury. He careens into the wall, punches hard enough to dent the plaster –

_– pushes at the plywood door, desperate, while the bedsprings scream in the next room_ –

– rebounds, turns in a circle over his own feet, kicks out at the nightstand –

– _sinks his teeth into the boy’s cheek, the guts of a soft fruit smearing down his face –_

 _–_ and slams into the bed where Daniel lies, bound in strange agonies. Rorschach forces himself to stop. In the hollow of Daniel’s throat, his heartbeat is like a gesture, vital semaphore. He is still alive. He may still live.

Rorschach pulls off his hat, his gloves, his scarf, his coat, his jacket. He lays them out as a makeshift camp bed. He settles down and tries not to think about how much they look like the shadow of a fallen man.

Time passes, he thinks.

Perhaps he sleeps. He suffers the sensation of waking abruptly, so he must sleep.

Daniel mutters something, gasps and shifts. He flings himself around suddenly and his hand drops over the edge of the bed.

Walter, lying on his back, struggles upright and drags his mask off completely. He puts his face against Daniel’s hand, rubs against it like a cat. _Know me. Don’t go yet. Don’t go before you know me_.

He stands up. The air has an ancient quality. It must be early in the morning. He pulls the mask back on. Daniel’s breathing is steady now. He doesn’t know what that means. He doesn’t dare to hope. Maybe he should ask the doctor.

He slips out of the bedroom. She’s not in the room where she keeps her ‘chemistry kit’ or in the kitchen. He creeps along the hall until he finds another room, a lounge. He can just about make out the shape of a sofa in the gloom, and a noise like distant breakwaters: Dr Chea snoring.

He walks to the end of the sofa. Black hair on a paler cushion at the far end, the boney gleam of an ankle at his.

“Sovanni.”

It’s the first time he’s ever said her name. He has no idea if he pronounces it correctly, but the sound wakes her with a snort.

“Hkk. Mmph. Ror-slak?”

He closes the ankle in his grip. Tendons flex. She sits up so that he can slide onto the end of the sofa. The sole of her foot, padded with thick calluses, scrapes his palm. He remembers the long, long walk from the clinic in the Village to Harlem, knives clanking under her tailored suit jackets.

For a while he says nothing, and he thinks he won’t speak at all. When the words come, they feel as if they’ve been spoken without his permission: “It should have been me.”

She waits.

“Big Figure aimed for me. Nite Owl protected me. Took the blow. Should have been me.”

“I understand,” she murmurs.

“No, you don’t,” he says, raising his voice. “Stop saying that. Means nothing. In pain, fighting to live. Man with a future. With friends. Loved ones. Someone who means something. Dying because of _me_.”

She settles back onto the sofa arm, takes a deep breath in, lets a deep breath out. Then she says:

“When I was a young girl, the French ruled Cambodia. My family are – I do not know the English word – we say haute bourgeoisie. Rich. If you are rich in Cambodia, you graduate in French. I receive my baccalauréat and I leave to study medicine at La Sorbonne in Paris when I am 18. When I am 20, Sihanouk declare independence. My father was so happy. He hated the French. He is a politician, so he lived long time serving under them. He loves his country. Fier d’être cambodgien.

“In France, it lasts nine years to study medicine, so I return home one time a year. I become very French. Honte d’être cambodgienne. I believe that my people are primitive, that they must evolve – this is the word, évolué – to the French system. I believe, when I am spit at in the street, it is my fault. When they say ‘go home, niakouée’, it is because I am fail. My father is angry that I am so weak. We fight. And then, ha, when I am 24, I marry a Frenchman. Such fighting! I do not return home for two years. I return only when my son is one year old, when I complete my degree and win a place at the John Hopkin. And then, it is to tell my father, my son will grow up évolué. An American.”

Rorschach is perfectly still.

“Told me you didn’t have children,” he says.

Dr Chea is perfectly still as well.

“I do not,” she says softly.

She swallows. Her throat is dry and the noise it makes is like a knock. He has a bizarre mental image of the words she’s trying to marshal rapping on the inside of her neck, struggling to get out.

“Not anymore,” she says finally, and that seems to be all she can manage. He hears that strange, tender noise a person makes when they are adjusting their voice against tears. “But, Roar-sak, when you say, ‘it should have been me’, I understand.”

Rorschach doesn’t ask her What Happened. It’s enough to know it that it did.

“And – the father?” he asks, instead.

“Oh, my husband?” says Dr Chea, in the kind of voice people say, “Oh, the mailman?” “We are already separate when… He did not want to come to America. He hoped for a nice Indochine housewife, not a diplômée. Connard,” she adds, without rancour.

She scrubs her hand across her face, spectral in the gloom. “Afterwards… I ensure I cannot have another child. I do not deserve. I make too much harm, too much pain. No one should feel this. I retrain. I help other women.”

“Pain management,” says Rorschach, and she hums in agreement.

He wonders if it’s always this arbitrary and meaningless, life. Why it rains water on most people and drops an anvil on a clownish, cursed few. What game God is playing when he drives one woman to destroy herself forever over a lost boy, and another woman to destroy a boy forever for surviving.

“My,” he says.

His jaw locks. He forces his gritted teeth apart.

“My mm. My, uh.”

It locks again. He hooks his thumbs under the mask, pulls it up to his cheekbones.

“My mmm. My. Mother. Told me. That she should have. Had an abortion. And I, uh. I often think. She was right.”

Sovanni sucks her breath in sharply. He feels rather than sees her move; there’s a wave of a scent peculiar to her – allium and alkali – and then she’s wrapped her arms around Walter’s neck and pulled him into a hug.

And Walter’s body, broken not just by the hours of grief but the years of it, the years of loneliness and fear and yearning yearning yearning yearning yearning to be cared for, gives in and throws his arms around her hollow little shoulders. He’s a child again, and he wants someone to look after him, and he wants to be told everything is okay, and his body looks for comfort and it does it by placing him flush against the most dangerous thing in the world: a woman.

_She’s going to hurt me_.

Walter’s mind leaves the room.

He remembers

_one night he goes out with Luis and a couple of Luis’s friends and he’s tasted beer for the first time – unpleasant, bitter, headache-inducing – and he sits in silence all night because that’s what he does and Luis doesn’t mind it but the other boys are teasing him, wassa matta Wally you don’t talk, we ought to get that tongue worked loose, you know they say Dolly can tie a knot in a cherry stalk, boy I bet she’d get you singing hymns, hey Dolly honey how’s it going come ova here meet Wally hey you were made for each other Wally and Dolly – and he looks up to see a girl of about twenty with big platinum curls and a lipstick smear on her teeth as she smiles to say hello and it looks like blood it looks like she bit someone and is laughing about it and the last thing he thinks before he knocks the table over is **she’s going to hurt me…**_

He remembers

_the first time sixteen-year-old Walter feels the footplate on his machine jam he doesn’t look around for help, he just folds himself up under the tiny table and starts to pick uselessly at the wiring until he hears a voice saying hello Red you’re new aren’t you do you need a hand and he peers out and there’s a woman with grey and black hair folded under a kerchief and an immense tributary of fine wrinkles radiating from her eyes and she’s smiling and coming closer and he’s trapped under the table and its like being locked in the closet and it’s like being kicked in a corner and just before he dashes out and shoves her into the next table he’s thinking **she’s going to hurt me…**_

****

He remembers

_sitting alone in a classroom at the Home reading a few weeks after writing up that horrid dream and the door creaks opens and it’s one of the teaching assistants and she pulls up a chair beside him now Walter I know you’ve been feeling a little under the weather lately maybe it would help you to have someone to talk to what’s that you’re reading oh Huckleberry Finn that was one of my favourites – and as she’s speaking he’s staring at the fat brown mole at the corner of her lip that bobs and winks as she talks like an eye and it’s staring at him and staring at him like the eye on a corpse and just before he grabs the metal ruler he’s thinking **she’s going to hurt me…**_

****

He remembers

_you little shit do you know what you just cost me I should have had that abortion like everyone said I’ll give you something to cry about I’ll_

_give_

_you_

_something_

_to_

_cry_

_about_

Walter comes to.

He doesn’t know how much time has passed. Two minutes? Two hours? There’s a rancid fog rolling around his skull. He’s kneeling on something hard – the floor. He thinks he can feel flesh in his hands.

Around his neck, something slides off slowly and then hits the ground with a sharp rap. Knuckles on hardwood, dropped limply. She’s dead, Walter thinks wildly. She’s dead, Sovanni’s dead, I killed her.

But then a voice from the floor, quite humorously: “Well. Baybe not suj a clever idea brom me.”

He’s broken her nose again.

He scrambles back, twisting his wrist. He’s in a state of complete dishevelment. He can feel that several of his buttons have torn free, that his mask is rucked up nearly at his eyes. He can taste blood. He is terrified. He doesn’t know what his body has done. He has lost time.

He half-runs, half-staggers from the room, crawl-flees up the stairs to the bedroom. There’s another body on the bed, a body he’s put there. Daniel looks calm now, oddly peaceful, which means he’s made it or he’s died. Walter can’t bear to deal with either option in this newly poisoned house. He fumbles for Archie’s console in the pocket of his trench, calls the owlship down. Outside, there’s a damning rumble, like the gates of hell falling off the latch, but it’s just the sound of thunder. A storm is coming. Summer 1965 is about to disappear into the water.


	21. Wild Geese

_You do not have to be good._

_You do not have to walk on your knees_

_for a hundred miles through the desert repenting._

_You only have to let the soft animal of your body_

_love what it loves._

_Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine._

_Meanwhile the world goes on._

  * from ‘Wild Geese’, Mary Oliver



Archie comes down with the storm.

One moment the sky is brooding and jumbled, the next it’s hidden in a haze of driving rain. Rorschach is grateful for the deluge; the storm will keep them hidden. He has no sense of how close to daylight it is, or how long he was with Dr Chea once he lost time. This night is a nightmare that feels as if it’s lasted his whole life.

He checks Daniel’s lips for breath. There’s life there, faint as an apology.

He has to half-carry, half-drag Daniel to the fire escape outside Dr Chea’s bedroom window and then heave him up to the roof one step at a time. He props Daniel’s body up against Archie’s flank and fumbles with the console in the torrential rain. They never show this in the movies – the bit where the protagonist can’t remember how to open the door to the getaway vehicle because he’s spent too much time perfecting his intimidating growl and fingerbreaking technique to pay attention. It’s humiliating. Even though no one can see him, it’s humiliating.

Eventually he manages it and bundles Daniel, still unconscious, through the door, where he lies in a puddle of rainwater. But Rorschach has forgotten the rest of his costume on the floor of the bedroom. He has to run back for it, slipping on the fire escape. They never show this bit either, the panicked back-and-forth, the fumbling prepwork.

When he gets back to the owlship, Daniel is sitting in the pilot’s chair. Rorschach exclaims with shock and relief and Daniel looks round – but with difficulty, as if his head is too heavy.

“You’re alright,” Rorschach says stupidly.

But Daniel passes out again.

Rorschach presses the button to close the door behind him, programmes the autopilot for the Nest, and drops to his knees beside Daniel.

“Daniel,” says Rorschach.

No response. Daniel’s chin lolls on his chest. He gently tips his forehead back, wipes a rope of drool from his mouth. “Daniel,” he says again, and when Daniel doesn’t respond, he feels utterly bereft.

Archie slips through the rain and sinks into the tunnel that leads to the Nest. The Nest itself is dark. Archie’s headlamps paint the room in unnerving chiaroscuro. It looks like a dream version of a familiar place. Rorschach Through the Looking Glass.

Daniel’s eyes fly open.

“Daniel! Say something,” says Rorschach urgently, seizing Daniel by the shoulders. “Look at me. Say something.”

Daniel draws a shuddering breath. His pupils are telescoping: huge, tiny, huge again. His right hand lands heavily on Rorschach’s face, cups it. A caress, Rorschach realises, as Daniel’s thumb scrubs along the edge of the mask (still rucked up to his cheekbones).

Then Daniel makes a move that, even years later, Rorschach will not be able to name as accidental or deliberate. He runs his hands upwards, as if smoothing Rorschach’s hair. The mask follows Daniel’s hand. It rolls up over Rorschach’s eyes, his forehead. It drops to the floor.

Walter freezes.

Daniel’s hand moves over his hair, drifts to the back of his head. The touch burns like a brand.

“Walter,” says Daniel.

Walter can’t remember how to breathe.

“Walter, please,” Daniel says, enunciating carefully, and Walter realises he’s asking for _water._ The motor in his chest restarts and he springs to his feet. The coffee panel has an option to dial for water. He manages it after the third try.

He brings it to Daniel, but Daniel has no grip, so he holds the cup to Daniel’s mouth, tips it as gently as he can. When Daniel’s drunk half the cup, he coughs and Walter pulls back.

“Amber,” says Daniel, and Walter wonders what word he’s mishearing now.

“Amber,” repeats Daniel. “Eyes. Beautiful.” He shuts his own and leans his head against Walter’s stomach. Only a thin, rain-soaked shirt divides skin from skin.

“Take you inside,” croaks Walter. He can feel Daniel’s breath on his stomach, slipping between buttons. He may as well be stabbing him.

Daniel gets up with difficulty. Walter helps him, taking as much weight as he can.

“Like lights,” mumbles Daniel, as they negotiate the ramp. “Lighthouse beams.”

“Stairs now,” says Walter, guiding him up to the kitchen.

“Felt them. Through the mask. Always. I thought blue.”

He breaks away from Walter suddenly, hits the wall behind him hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs, and gazes with unfocused eyes through the kitchen’s domestic darkness.

“Amber,” he says, wonderingly.

Walter puts his hands over his face. He’s going to cry. Possibly he is already crying – his face is hot and confused. He can’t remember how to locate and name the individual parts of his being.

“Dreamt,” says Daniel. His voice is a little surer now – the sedative is slowly wearing off. “When I was – sunk. Dreamt I was trapped in a fire. Locked in. Whole body burning.”

Walter’s hands bunch, press fists into his eyes.

“My body burned,” says Daniel. “It _burned_. I felt it char. I _felt_ it. And it wouldn’t stop. Thought it would have to stop. That I’d die. Die and be released. But it wouldn’t stop.”

“Excalibur,” mutters Walter. Behind his fists, raised like a boxer’s, his eyes dart back and forth. There must be something in this kitchen he can hide his face behind.

He gasps with shock when Daniel is suddenly in front of him, dragging his fists down from his face. Only then does he see Daniel is crying too – wild-eyed, open-mouthed.

“Rorschach,” he’s saying, through the tears. “I thought I was trapped. Pain forever. Oh my God. Please. Touch me. I can’t bear it. Something tender – please – ”

He falls against Walter, chest to chest, heartbeat to heartbeat, mouth to mouth. He kisses like he’s drowning.

The small of Walter back hits the sink, bent under the weight of kisses. He wraps his arms around Daniel’s neck. “Should have been me,” he says, with difficulty, as Daniel’s kisses pull the breath from him. “Failed you.”

“No,” pants Daniel. “Never failed me. Here. You’re here.” Firm fingers grip Walter’s thigh, heave him upwards so he’s sitting on the edge of the sink. Daniel is between his legs. _Daniel is between his legs_.

He thinks he’s going to black out, lose time. He thinks his mind is going to abandon his body as a soul leaves a corpse. He waits for it to happen when Daniel’s big hands pull him by his hips, when Daniel’s tongue slides along the pulse line in his neck, when he keens with need and fear. But he doesn’t. He stays. The utter clarity shocks him.

“Stop,” he says, and Daniel stops instantly.

They’re still entangled, and Walter can feel the vital, beautiful thrumming of a living boy against him. His mouth tastes like the memory of sugar. He pulls back a little.

“Don’t want to fail you,” Walter says.

“You have _never_ failed me.”

Walter tests the pad of Daniel’s lower lip with his fingers. Soft. Mouth parted for him. It’s too much. He licks at Daniel’s mouth. They don’t show that bit in the movies either – a man so overwhelmed with what he feels that he can’t even shape a kiss, can only lap hungrily.

“Daniel. Tell me. What you need,” he says hoarsely.

“Just you.”

“How. Tell me. Make it up to you.”

Daniel lets out a shaky breath, which Walter feels against his mouth and chin. He’s so close. When the hesitation goes on a few seconds longer, Walter’s thoughts suggest, in Sam Spade’s dry tones, that a man who has only just recovered from chemical torture and a hospital-grade sedative might not have the faculties to articulate his own desires.

“Just be with me,” Daniel finally whispers.

How to translate that? What to offer? Walter’s vocabulary of desire is limited, but he thinks he understands what’s being asked of him. He slips off the sink, squeezes past Daniel and moves through the gloom to the door. The noise of the rain crowds in.

“Rorschach,” Daniel calls after him uncertainly.

He has imagined this, of course. He is a strategist. He has surmised, from one climb to the roof, where Daniel’s bedroom is. He has thought about taking these steps so often that, even in the dark, he doesn’t even stumble (though behind him, Daniel, still woozy, does). He had not imagined the shaking that racks his body in waves, but then again, he had not imagined whatever had passed in violence between him and Dr Chea and the way it had torn his shirt; when he gets to the bedroom, though he shakes horribly, he is at least able to pull his shirt off without a struggle.

“Oh,” says Daniel, weakly.

Two warm palms cup the contours of his shoulder blades. Gentle. He lurches away from the touch.

“Can I turn the light on?” Daniel asks in a small voice.

“No,” he hisses, and before he can change his mind he whips round and grabs Daniel by the neck of his ruined costume. One hard tug and Daniel is sprawled on the bed, crying out in a way that makes Walter feel like there’s a live current between his legs, that makes Walter feel like he’s harmed something innocent. He pushes into it as he would into a brawl. He’s so frightened he wants to scream.

And then it’s more like fighting – the way he starts to tear and tug the Nite Owl costume off Daniel, the instinct to block Daniel’s hands as they rise to halt his progress – _Rorschach, talk to me –_ his shuddering struggle to keep Daniel below him, beneath him, pinned in place. When he sees Daniel’s broad shoulders, his firm stomach, a twist of brown hair that leads downwards from his belly button – all peeled out from the costume like the heart of a flower whose petals have been pulled in a sadistic game – he squints his eyes against it, against the beauty of it, against what pathetic fallibility might rise in him.

Daniel goes limp below him, stripped to the hips. Walter’s blood is high and singing.

He leans closer. “Is this what you want?”

Daniel, with a grunt of effort, manages to lift his upper body from the mattress. Walter’s fingers flex as he tries to force Daniel back down, but the shaking comes back and his grip weakens. He is forced to let Daniel up.

Daniel kisses Walter on the end of his nose.

All the fight drains out of him.

“You’re okay,” says Daniel tenderly.

“No,” says Walter, and sags.

“I’m here,” says Daniel, reaching out. His hands light softly on Walter’s ribs, more supporting than grasping. “I can just hold you. That’s all. Let me just hold you.”

Walter pulls back, crosses his arms over his naked torso. He’d do anything to be absent. Why does his mind keep him here in his body? Why does he have to feel it, the anguish, the shame, the heat of a sob in the back of his throat?

“Mistake,” he chokes.

Daniel doesn’t answer, just draws him down. With infinitesimal movements, as delicately man handling a wild animal, he shifts Walter until they are lying on their sides on the bed, facing one another.

“Let you down,” says Walter, when they’re still.

“No. Never.”

“Should have been me.”

For this appalling truth, he’s rewarded with a slow kiss that almost breaks him.

“I’m glad it was me,” Daniel whispers. “I couldn’t have handled watching it happen to you. I _felt_ it. Torture. Delirium. I’d do it again if it meant you never had to.”

They are so close that his whispers are tangible on Walter’s lips; he feels the shape of the words, feels their sincerity, and that almost breaks him too.

“Only thing I’ve got right so far,” murmurs Daniel, and that _does_ break him. He lets out the sob as quietly as he can and Daniel’s arms tighten around him.

Time is strange again, limp and mournful. He feels – he realises – safe, and with that knowledge comes a great untensing that pulls the skin off him, blowtorches his last defences.

He falls asleep at some point, still in Daniel’s arms, and when he starts awake, he can feel Daniel is asleep too. The weight of the fact settles in bed with them: here they are, embracing, together.

The arm he has tucked against his body to fit in Daniel’s embrace has gone numb and he has to manoeuvre it with his other hand to get it out.

The movement wakes Daniel, who grunts and twitches.

“Rorschach?” he says, uncertainly. His fingers drift across Walter’s cheek. “Uh… what time is it?”

“Darkest before.”

“Hmm?” Daniel yawns.

“Coming up to dawn.”

Fingers trace his mouth and jaw. “I can almost see you.”

“Unfortunate for you.”

Daniel laughs softly. “I’ll be the judge of that.” Pause. “Can I turn on the light? I can’t quite remember what you… I was so out of it when…”

“No.” He touches his tongue to the tip of Daniel’s fingers, is half-surprised there isn’t a spark. He sucks Daniel’s finger in and Daniel makes a noise, god, he can’t think of how to describe that noise, but every single nerve in his body lights up.

“Kiss me,” says Daniel, and urgency catches in him. He rocks his whole body into the kiss. Strange choreography between the covers; they find new positions. He runs his hands over Daniel’s back like he’s trying to read his thoughts through his skin. He could never touch Daniel enough. He wants to be greedy in touching him.

“Perfect,” he says. Daniel answers him by mouthing something against his neck, maybe “Rorschach,” or “Hold on,” or “More, more,” disyllabic, delicious.

His hips buck again, and again, pick up a rhythm. He feels like he’s running downhill. It’s so easy, once he lets his body lead him. Every part of him wants to go there. One moment follows the other seamlessly. He’s whole. He’s flying.

Daniel moans and grinds against him. He can feel hardness in the hollow of his hip, the steadily mounting heat of Daniel’s pleasure through their clothes. “Kiss me again,” Daniel gasps, and he does it, hooking one leg over Daniel to draw him closer, and, “Oh my God,” and he thinks there’s something wild and holy between them, and, “Kiss me again, kiss me when I come,” and the next kiss smothers the sound of Daniel losing words, and his breath stops, the world stops, a perfect ecstatic silence fills his whole body.

.

.

.

He comes back to himself.

“Did you, uh,” says Daniel, shifting, then, “Oh, yes, you – wow, well.”

Walter grimaces. Whatever sacred thing had been in the room has slipped out, and he is uncomfortably aware of a spreading damp patch.

“This costume is going in the trash,” says Daniel firmly, and rolls away to wriggle out of it. In the pre-dawn gloom, Walter catches a flash of a very nicely rounded buttock and springs up, suddenly shy.

“Everything okay?” Daniel asks, pausing in his sartorial wrestling match.

Walter flops out of bed, shudders when he feels liquid tracking down his thigh. “Using your shower,” he mutters.

He hobbles out of the room, feeling his way along a dark corridor and into a bathroom three times the size of his kitchen. He pulls off the pinstripes and his underwear, wincing as the material pulls away from his sticky, matted crotch. The clothes are dropped into the tub. There’s a shower, but he can’t see the buttons.

He pulls a cord in the corner and the bathroom flashes into colour.

He climbs into the tub and turns the water on. Hot water hits him squarely between the shoulders.

He takes a deep, deep breath, and looks down.

Here is his body.

Here are the copper tufts of hair on his chest. Here are the pale pink nipples, one smeared by a healed scar, both sensitive to touch. Here is the sinewy strength of his belly – whiplike, scrawny-tough, flickering with scars. Here are five moles, tracking down the length of his torso, a secret, human constellation which he touches wonderingly. Here is the water running over his skinny thighs with their golden-red fuzz, his calves, down to his narrow feet; here is the second toe, slightly longer than the big toe on each foot, which he wiggles. He twists round and here is the blade of his back, a dusting of orange hair marking the base of his spine. Here is a firm ass, with hollows in the cheeks he can fit a fist into. He twists back and here is a dense nest of vibrant clementine curls, and below it, here is what Walter thinks of, rather old-fashioned, as _his sex_ – here is his sex, then, its head coral-coloured, its foreskin the same paper-white as his stomach, with its blameless seam that runs down the underside.

Here is the body that he’s made of.

Steam fills the room. Walter spends a long time carefully cleaning himself. Daniel’s shampoo looks expensive and he uses a generous dollop. When he’s done and the water runs clears, he kneels in the tub and scrubs his clothes.

He hops out and dries off with an enormous towel draped across the rail. It’s fluffy. Walter has never experienced a fluffy towel – his own, sole towel is like waterlogged sandpaper – so he takes his time, savours a new sensation.

What next, for a body? Naked, he pads downstairs and locates a dryer (decadence! a personal dryer!), drops his clothes in, sets it running, ambles about the kitchen. He opens cupboards, pokes at cans. He finds the sugar canister and eats a lump of sugar. It takes his mind back to Daniel, so he takes himself back up to Daniel.

Daniel has fallen asleep again, breathing deep and steady. He’s naked too, half over and half under the duvet. Walter leans down and kisses the corner of his mouth.

He has fixed things.

Daniel murmurs in his sleep, rolls over.

He _has_ fixed things, hasn’t he?

Something sparks in the back of his skull. He tries to quash it but the spark jumps, crackles. A blaze spreads through the archives in his mind.

_what have you done what have you done what have you done what have you done what have you done what have you done what have you done what have you done what have you done what have you done what have you done what have you done what have you done what have you done what have you done what have you done_

Less than fifteen minutes later, Rorschach is striding through the rain towards the offices of the _New York Gazette_ , masked and mostly dressed. (He has no shirt – he’s put the jacket and the trench on a bare chest he now dreads to see, nauseous with guilt.) His brain is crowded with alarms.

_playing the whore instead of doing your job_

_what have you done_

An hour later, and Rorschach has dropped Big Figure’s journal off at the _Gazette_ ’s mailroom, slipping past the drowsing clerk. Now all of New York and soon the whole country will know what Goliath is up to – he says to himself, loudly, over the alarms, but the screeching continues, deafening.

_made a mess_

_whoreson_

An hour and forty-five minutes later, his vision flashing on and off as the exhaustion wells, Rorschach is climbing the fire escape of Dr Chea’s apartment block. Daniel must be awake by now. Rorschach left no note and Daniel will wake up alone; Daniel will wake up and be harmed by absence.

I’ll deal with Chea and then I’ll go back to him, he tells himself.

_made a mess_

I’ll fix it.

_ruined everything_

At the window, he sees the doctor sitting in a chair in her kitchen, facing away. Her hair is matted and she wears the same clothes as the hour he left her. Her head is bowed– sunk, chin to chest.

He slips in, says her name. The air smells metallic. He is exhausted, his eyes filled with drifting green-purple amoeba, his mind filled with chittering, and so it takes him several seconds to realise that Dr Chea’s hands are tied behind her back.


	22. The Lost Map

Two steps and he’s in front of her. Her head is bowed and he can see the stark white slice of her parting, a thin cord of blood dripping from somewhere on her face, pooling in her lap. He kneels and lifts her head. One of her eyes is swollen shut; the other blinks open. Sovanni Chea meets his mask and her eye shows a rare, clear emotion: horror.

“Leave!” she hisses, and the cord of blood breaks. He wipes her mouth on his sleeve.

“Who did this?” he asks. He does not ask the question he’s dreading the answer to: _did I do this?_

“Ah, Rorschach,” says a voice from the kitchen doorway. “Good. You’re late.”

He goes from kneeling to fighting stance in the time it takes to draw half a breath. Ozymandias is standing in the doorway, framed by the hallway’s pallid light, carrying one of Dr Chea’s beautiful knives. Rorschach drops his defensively raised fists in another half breath, and holds out his hand. It all happens in a matter of seconds. His brain glitches through the adrenalin.

“Give me knife, will cut her free.”

Ozymandias smiles his toothpaste-advert smile. “Cut her free? This woman is a public enemy.”

The light moves like a living thing on the blade, on the shiny white grin. “ _You_ did this,” Rorschach says, flatly.

“Of course. I apprehended a dangerous criminal plotting to disseminate a destructive drug.” Behind him, Rorschach hears Dr Chea spit something onto the floor. It rattles – a horrible, tiny noise that will be stored at maximum, deafening volume in the archives for many years to come.

“Got it wrong,” Rorschach says, voice compressed with strain. “Big Figure and Goliath responsible for Excalibur distribution. Doctor persuaded to prescribe it as a methadone replacement. Wrong place, wrong time.”

“Oh, I know about the painkiller plot. A lovely bit of work. Getting Big Figure off the street is sure to be a feather in your cap. And such a coup for young Dreiberg in his first year as a mask. No, I’m referring to your dear doctor’s attempt to poison the city’s water supply with Excalibur early this morning.”

For a moment, the room goes dark. Rorschach sees nothing but a starless, opaque depth, his ears and nose and eyes blocked. It’s like being plunged into well water. When he surfaces – only a moment has passed – Ozymandias is dreamily testing the blade on his thumb. A thin red line weeps where the knife touches and he raises his eyebrows.

“I’ve been working on this particular Khmer Issarak cell for a couple of years. The old Issarak are all anti-French, anti-colonialist democrats; I believe her father, Colonel Sary Chea, was a founding member. But there’s a breakaway faction that’s been working closely with the Viet Cong. Educated Cambodians, you know, radicalised in Europe. Communism is _so_ terribly fashionable over there.” His smile broadens. “But you know all this, and each other, of course.”

“Met him once,” says Dr Chea, at his back. “Broke my nose.”

Ozymandias looks past Rorschach. “Just the once, dear Sovanni?”

“Yes. Very violent man. Not sure why you bring him here. Maybe ask him to knock out one other of my teeth.”

“I know you’re lying,” says Ozymandias pleasantly. “It won’t help either of you. Within the context of the conflict in Vietnam, attempting to poison Manhattan’s water supply _is_ an act of war. They won’t care that you’re not Vietnamese, my dear. Most of them won’t be able to tell the difference. I’m surprised at you, Rorschach,” he adds, “offering your friendship to an enemy of the state so blithely. I’d always had you down as an unconditional patriot.”

Rorschach is receiving far too much information. New facts are throwing themselves at him like pack wolves, noisy and terrifying. He tries to focus on one of them.

“Poisoned the water?” he asks, turning to Dr Chea. His voice comes out softer than he wants it to.

She doesn’t look at him; he sees movement in her cheek as her tongue probes for more loose teeth. “No,” she says eventually. “Did not.”

“You were sitting at the water treatment centre with a crate full of Excalibur, staring into the reservoirs,” Ozymandias breaks in impatiently. “The fact that you might have had a change of heart once you arrived makes no difference. There was still a conspiracy.”

They both ignore him. “ _Children_ drink that water,” Rorschach says to her.

Now she looks at him, and he almost flinches: her gaze, which has always been mild and mad, staring through his head into the middle distance, is utterly focused. He can’t read her expression, suffused as it is by damage, but it pierces him anyway.

“There are children in the villages you bomb,” Dr Chea says, slowly, through a mouth of blood. “Children also when you shoot at innocent people, to punish them because they are Vietnamese.”

“Necessary in war,” Rorschach says, his throat tight. “Protecting America.”

“Ah. American tactics. You think there were no children in Hiroshima?”

“Fighting _fascism_ ,” snaps Rorschach. “ _Immoral_ to compare.”

“Nagasaki? You already prove your point in Hiroshima but you must kill everyone in Nagasaki also? Oh, but I forgot,” she adds, rolling her shoulders. The ropes that bind her wrists creak as she twists against them. “No _American_ children die.”

Rorschach doesn’t say anything.

“Come now, Sovanni,” Ozymandias interrupts, revoltingly jovial. “Get off your high horse, or whatever your local colloquialism is. There’s not much love between Japan and Indochina. You didn’t do so well out of their colonisation either.” An ugly twist of Dr Chea’s features – then it’s gone, she’s blank and weird as ever. “Rorschach is quite right, occasional civilian deaths are a tragic by-product of a war waged for the safety of humanity. I know you’re sensitive about children. It’s tragic that the sniper killed your son instead of you. But _I’m_ not the mask responsible for that.”

There’s a beat, then: “You know,” says Dr Chea, “in the three languages I speak, there is no word for a woman who was once a mother.”

“Hmm. No,” says Ozymandias. “Nor in any of the seven I speak.”

If the situation weren’t so appalling, and if Rorschach wasn’t digesting the news of a historic assassination attempt, he might have found the frozen look on Dr Chea’s face quite funny.

“Didn’t poison anyone,” he says finally, having worked through this single fact, and Ozymandias sighs as if he is a particularly dim-witted schoolboy.

“Try to keep up, Rorschach. She is a member of a Khmer Issarak cell. She will be tried as an enemy combatant whose operation failed, if nothing else. As you can see here,” he waves his hand at the pulverised mess of the doctor’s face, “I’ve been trying to persuade her to offer me some co-conspirator names. No luck so far. She had a map, though I regret to say she ate it when she saw me coming, which means I don’t have that as evidence but I did get the first punch in. Just as well really, those nasty little knives are very sharp. I saw what they did to poor Bastien Clowes.”

“Yes? With your eyes, you saw? And with their eyes, who saw me?” asks Dr Chea, placidly cheerful.

“Ah, doctor, doctor. You know very well no one saw you. In a nightclub where the men are there for the go-go dancers, no one sees a woman older than 25. If they saw anything, they saw an Asian person in plain clothes – a cleaner, or kitchen staff, and they all look the same. You were probably counting on that, weren’t you?”

“Were I?” Dr Chea twinkles.

Rorschach can’t bear this pantomime of friendliness, made grotesque by the awkward way Dr Chea has to speak through her shattered mouth. He addresses Ozymandias, across the conversation: “Brought her back to her home. Could have turned her in.”

“I was hoping you’d join us,” says Ozymandias, pleasant as ever. “The House Committee on Un-American Activities would certainly appreciate your cooperation in explaining what you know about her. They know I’ve been tailing her for some time, but your visits came as a bit of a surprise. You’d have to unmask, of course.”

Back in 1962, Walter had become Rorschach in the shadow of Ozymandias’s achievements. They were very different vigilantes: one courted camera lights, the other kept to the shadows. He hadn’t considered how Ozymandias might have felt about another masked vigilante in New York. Ozymandias might well have found him too uncompromising, too vicious. It comes to him, now, with ugly clarity, that Ozymandias has considered him not an _ally_ but a _problem_.

He has been set up.

Another creak as Dr Chea shifts. “Tell you before,” she says. “Don’t know him. He is _your_ friend.”

“Not friends,” says Rorschach, and Ozymandias smiles a cold, cold smile.

“No, indeed,” he says.

Rorschach leans against the kitchen table beside Dr Chea. He feels as if he’s held up by nothing but smoke below his waist. He imagines that his outline wavers, his form dissembling as his certainties do too. He has to steady himself, and hopes it comes across as an insouciant lounge.

“What will happen to her?” he asks.

“Hmm. Well. Colonel Chea is influential in Cambodian politics and Cambodia _has_ declared itself a neutral country. I believe the Johnson administration would prefer to keep Cambodia on side; they share quite a long border with Vietnam, which is strategically useful. She’ll be deported, but alive, and with all her limbs and faculties.”

He raises the knife to his mouth and taps it thoughtfully, a strange parody of a coquette. His eyes have not left Rorschach masked face.

“Of course, she might be, ah, _forced_ to plead not guilty by reason of insanity. But she’ll be a liability in that situation. There’s quite a substantial stigma against psychiatric patients in her homeland. Chea’s political rivals might claim his daughter has been possessed by a demon. She’ll be locked up in some psychiatric ward – not one of the nice ones, I imagine the colonel will stop her allowance… Anyway, every one of her allies will abandon her. I suppose she’ll die there.”

He gives Rorschach a look that pins him in place like a butterfly. “If you think that she’d be better off as a captured enemy combatant, you’ll have to give evidence before the House.”

Dr Chea spits again, and a scarlet blob splatters on the floor. Ozymandias wrinkles his nose.

“I _am_ a demon,” she says, calmly. “I do not know this man and his horrible hat. You have many clever plans, Mr Shiny, many clever words, but you have forget: I do not care about anything anymore.”

Ozymandias’s arms blurs suddenly and even Rorschach is too slow to stop it. But Ozymandias hasn’t moved towards them; he has just stabbed the knife into Dr Chea’s table, where it sinks several inches. For a moment, Ozymandias’s mouth twists, raw and vicious with fury. It’s gone as quickly as it appears, and he laughs, and Dr Chea laughs, and it’s like they are guests at a garden party, and Rorschach feels sick and dizzy.

“I think you still care about _some_ things, dear Sovanni,” says Ozymandias. “But that’s your funeral. Rorschach, since you seemingly do not know this woman and can’t be of any help to me, I suggest you leave.” He narrows his eyes at Rorschach. “Give my best to young Dreiberg, won’t you. Such a bright young man, with such an interesting future ahead of him. I hope he’s sensible in protecting it.”

Rorschach wavers upright. He catches Dr Chea’s one good eye and sees a faint warmth, like a dying ember, in the back of it. She gives him the smallest, smallest smile. Then the demon climbs into her face and she’s gone.

He has to leave, so he leaves. He doesn’t turn around, and he doesn’t say goodbye. He doesn’t stay to watch what Ozymandias does with the demon. He swings onto the rooftop and lets the momentum take him back the way he came, running through the unrelenting rain. He runs and runs, leaping between buildings, until his mind catches up with the sound of his body – his open mouth, his aching chest, a constant low scream at the back at his throat.

He stops at the edge of a rooftop and looks down. Garbage bobs in a flooded alleyway. Bright wrappers and the vivid rot of discarded food melt into the brownish puddles. He closes his eyes and lets himself fall into grief: always there, and now deeper. He sinks. He allows himself to think, before he locks it away for good, that while Sovanni Chea was a failed Communist, a failed Cambodian, a failed American, a failed wife, a failed doctor, a failed friend, she might, if given half the chance, have been a good enough mother.


End file.
